Book. i I 

Copyright^ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



f 



of the feibk 



By 1Rev>. %o\xis Elbert JBanfts, 2>.2>. 

Author of 

" The Great Sinners of the Bible/ ' " The Great Saints of the 
Bible/* " The Great Portraits of the Bible,' ' " The 
Great Promises of the Bible,' ' etc. 




Iftew Korft: Eaton & /Hbains 
Cincinnati : Jennings & <3rabam 



Copyright, 1911 by 
EATON & MAINS 



no, 



©CI.A300290 

vu. » 



TO MY FRIEND 
THE REV. PURLEY A. BAKER, D.D. 

THIS VOLUME 
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 



CONTENTS 



I PAGE 

The Answer to Life's Hidden Riddle 9 

II 

The Wall of Fire 24 

III 

An Old Portrait of Christ 39 

IV 

The Traveler's Hope: A New Year's Sermon 54 

V 

The Master's Vessel 69 

VI 

The Strength Won from the Desert 84 

VII 

The New Song 95 

VIII 

Living by the Higher Vision 110 

IX 

Christ the Pioneer of Humanity 121 

X 

The Marks of a Growing Manhood 133 

XI 

Facing Life's Sackcloth With Unblinking Eyes 145 

XII 

The Christ Tincture in Human Life 158 

XIII 

The Bird in Thy Bosom T 170 

XIV 

The Man Who Is the Garment of God 182 

5 



6 CONTENTS 

XV PAGE 

The Vision and the Temple 194 

/ \ „ ' 

XVI 

The Unrecognized Ministries of Life 206 

XVII 

The Spirit of the Christian Life. 217 

XVIII 

The Garments of Religion 230 

XIX 

The Worth of a Man 245 

XX 

The True Food of the Christian Life 260 

XXI . 
The Kinsmen of Jesus Christ . . 273 

XXII 

Where the Shadows Are White ... 286 

XXIII 

The Value of the Mysterious 300 

XXIV 

A Chain of Blessing 312 

XXV 

The True Test for the Christian's Conduct. 324 

XXVI 

The Working Principle of True Religion ....... — 338 

XXVII 

God's Proprietorship in Human Souls 352 

XXVIII 

The Twin Seals of Love and Power 368 

XXIX ' 

The Christmas Guest . ... 381 

XXX 

The Kingliness of Patience 396 



AtlTHOK'S WOED WITH THE READER 



This volume is called "The Great Themes of the 
Bible" because the discourses of which it is com- 
posed deal with those deep yearnings and question- 
ings of the soul of man which alone find their 
satisfaction and solace in the Bible. The themes 
treated here are studies of those great elemental 
problems which confront men and women in every 
age and which must find solution for each of us if 
the soul is to know true peace. In their delivery 
the blessing of God rested upon them to the comfort 
and consolation of many hearts, and they are given 
to the printed page with the author's earnest prayer 
that they may bring blessing to all who read them. 
Very sincerely, 

Louis Albert Banks. 

Delaware, Ohio, September 25, 1911. 



CHAPTEK I 



The Answer to Life's Hidden Kiddle 

And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a great 
voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose 
the seals thereof? — Rev. 5. 2. 

Pope has said, "The proper study of mankind 
is man." And certainly no other riddle which 
man has tried to guess has been so hard to solve 
as the problem of his own origin, present status, 
and future career. Man himself is the sphinx 
of the universe when left to himself. The poet 
Heine is not far out of the way in his logic and 
reasoning for a man who throws aside the Bible 
and the divine Christ around whom the Bible 
gathers. In one of his poems he makes fun of 
the man who expects an answer to the questions 
which the unaided human mind is forever ask- 
ing of the universe and of himself. He declares 
that a man is a fool who expects to get an answer 
to those great questions of What? Whence? and 
Whither? which men are forever asking concern- 
ing themselves. He pictures a man standing by 
the sea and looking out across the waves at night 
with the intolerable longing of his soul to know 
about himself and the purpose of his being, and 
the hope, if there be hope, of his career : 

9 



10 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

By the sea, by the desert night-covered sea, 
Standeth a youth, 

His breast full of sadness, his head full of doubtings, 
And with gloomy lips he asks of the billows: 
"O answer me life's hidden riddle. . . . 
Tell me what signifies man? 

From whence doth he come? And where doth he go? 
Who dwelleth amongst the golden stars yonder?" 
The billows are murmuring their murmur eternal, 
The wind is blowing, the clouds are flying, 
The stars are twinkling, all listless and cold, 
And a fool is awaiting an answer. 

This is a very natural view of the universe 
and of man if you shut out the Bible and the 
Christ who illuminates the Bible and for whom 
the Bible was written. We must never forget, 
when we think of the Bible, that Christ is its 
core. The Bible finds its reason in Christ. It 
was written by many different writers, under 
every conceivable condition and circumstance. 
Some of its records have their origin so remote 
that we lose the trail of human evidence. All 
we know is that we have them and that the pres- 
ence of the living God is in them. The Bible was 
written in different languages by men living 
many hundreds of years apart. Some of it is his- 
tory, some philosophy, some poetry, some proph- 
ecy. It deals with everything, human and divine. 
It talks of God and of angels as well as of men 
and women. It is a natural book, in which the 
sun shines and the moon and the stars give their 



THE ANSWER TO EIFe's HIDDEN RIDDLE 11 

light. It is a book where the birds sing, where 
the grass grows green on the hillside, where the 
cows low in the evening, where the lion roars in 
the night, and the flowers lift their heads to greet 
the sunrise in the morning. The Bible is all that. 
But, above all, it is the Book of Jesus Christ. 
Begin back in the very first book with God's 
promise to Eve, and later to Abraham, and you 
may trace a scarlet trail across every book, over 
the hills and through the valleys of kingdoms and 
peoples, a trail that is ever growing plainer and 
broader, until after a while, in the Psalms and 
in Isaiah, it gets to be a great highway leading, 
always leading, with an ever-increasing number 
of signboards, pointing onward to the cross on 
Calvary, where Jesus Christ gave himself as a 
ransom for the sins of the world; and follow 
down the way beyond Calvary, through the Acts 
of the Apostles and their writings, up to the last 
word in the book of Eevelation, and every hand, 
and every new convert, and every new people 
surrendering to Christianity points backward to 
the cross on Golgotha's rugged summit, where 
Jesus died for men. Christ is the center of the 
Bible and he is its key, and the Bible and Christ 
give us the key to the sealed book of man's riddle. 



I 

In the Bible and the Christ of the Bible we 



12 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

have the answer to the hidden riddle of man's 
origin and purpose. In the poem which I quoted 
from Heine he cries: 

"O answer me life's hidden riddle. . . . 
Tell me what signifies man? 

From whence doth he come? And where doth he go? 
Who dwelleth amongst the golden stars yonder?" 

Open your Bible and the very first word tells 
you, "In the beginning God created the heaven 
and the earth." Read onward and it will tell 
you how light came out of darkness, how chaos 
came to order, how mountains reared themselves 
in the midst of the sea, and the continents of the 
dry land appeared. It will tell you how the grass 
grew on the plains and valleys, how the trees 
budded and bloomed and spread their branches 
on the tablelands and mountains, how the fish 
came in the seas, how the birds and animal life 
filled the air and the woods and the wide ex- 
tended prairies. It will tell you how the heavens 
stretched above, with the dial plate of the great 
clock of time marked by sun and moon and stars. 
It will tell you, farther, that after it was all 
done — this beautiful world, with its sweet atmos- 
phere, and its glory of sunshine after rain — a 
council was held in heaven, and the heavenly 
Father, communing, said, "Let us make man in 
our image and likeness." And so man came forth 
into this new home which had been fitting for 



THE ANSWER TO LIFE'S HIDDEN RIDDLE 13 

him through the ages. This is man's significance. 
He is the child of the ever-living God; he was 
made to have dominion over the world, to master 
it, and govern it, and occupy it, and make it the 
theater of beauty and blessing. He is not a clod 
of the earth ; there is in him a kinship to heaven. 
The breath of God is in him; he is God's son. 
This is man's great significance. 

II 

It is only in the Bible and the Christ of the 
Bible that we can find an answer to the riddle of 
sin, atonement for sin, and pardon for sin. When 
we read the Bible and learn of man's creation as 
a free moral agent, with power to choose, with 
will to do the right or the wrong, we come to 
understand what sin is. We know then why it is 
that when we disobey God and break his laws, 
whether it be the law of gravitation, or the law 
of our own bodies, or the law of love in relation 
to our fellow men, there is something in our own 
breast which we have learned to call conscience 
that has its own judge and jury and prosecutes 
us at its bar, and gives us fear, and warning of 
peril, and remorse for the evil thing which we 
have done. We come to know that sin is a rebel- 
lion against the law of Him who made us, and 
who has a right to our service. In the light of 
that knowledge we come to understand the atone- 



14 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

ment of Jesus Christ. Few writers in literature 
have had such a clear understanding of the atone- 
ment as Victor Hugo. In that oft-quoted incident 
in "Les Miserables" he puts the truth in the story 
of the escaping convict, Jean Valjean, who had 
been graciously entertained by the kindly old 
bishop, and, waking in the night, under the 
mastery of his old passions and wicked habits, 
had robbed the good bishop of his silver candle- 
sticks and had fled. Later, when the police 
caught and brought him back with the candle- 
sticks in his possession, the bishop said: '"Why 
should he not take them ? They are his." Then, 
when the astonished officers of the law had re- 
tired, the good man leaned forward and looked 
the poor, miserable, amazed thief in the face and 
said, "Jean Valjean, I have bought you from 
yourself; go, and be a better man." There is the 
essence of the gospel of the atonement. Christ's 
forgiveness buys us from ourselves, and lifts us 
into a higher life. 

I wish to emphasize with all the power I have 
this mightiest truth of the gospel, that Christ is 
the only key that will unlock the riddle of man's 
sin and bring pardon and forgiveness. Some 
years ago Dr. Henry van Dyke wrote a very beau- 
tiful little Christmas story entitled "The Lost 
Word." It gives a striking account of a young 
man named Hermas, the son of Demetrius, who 



THE ANSWER TO LIFE ? S HIDDEN RIDDLE 15 

became a Christian. Because of this, his father, 
a man of large wealth, disinherited him. He be- 
came a disciple of John, the dearest friend of 
Jesus, and at last, wearied of his discipleship 
and utterly discouraged, he wanders back into the 
vicinity of his old home. There he meets a ma- 
gician, who reads his fortune in a leaf, and finally 
promises that if he will give him but one word 
out of his vocabulary he will restore him to the 
joy that once was his. The promise is at last 
made, and suddenly Hernias is in his home again 
without the one word, and the one word is the 
name of his Lord. He finds his father dying and 
the old man welcomes his return and cries out: 
"My son, when you left me you found something 
that made your life beautiful. Mine has been a 
failure ; will you not tell me what I must do now, 
for I am to die?" And unconsciously the boy 
began, "Father, you must believe in — " and, be- 
hold, the word had .gone from him. He had 
parted with it, and he stands shamefaced in the 
presence of his dying father. He marries a beau- 
tiful girl and God gives them a lovely child. 
They are seated one day in the garden with their 
hearts overflowing with gratitude, when the wife 
suggests that they kneel down and express their 
thanks for all their treasures, and again he begins, 
"We thank thee, O — " and speech fails him, for 
he has sold his Lord and he cannot even recall his 



16 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



name. He is a competitor in the chariot races 
and wins the prize, but cares nothing for it, be- 
cause his heart is heavy. He takes his little son 
in the chariot with him and whirls about the 
course. The horses become unmanageable and 
the child is thrown from the chariot and seriously 
injured. Nearer dead than alive, he is carried 
back to their luxurious home, and the father 
kneels down by his bedside. There is no hope 
now except in prayer. He cried out, "Spare him, 
O spare him, — And there is no word to 
fill the place, for he has sold his Lord. Then 
suddenly his old friend, the beloved disciple John, 
appears, and after tears of repentance he is re- 
stored again to his priceless position. The lost 
word, the name of Christ his Saviour, is his again, 
and in his name heaven's forgiveness is unlocked 
and his peace restored. 

It may be that I now speak to some who find 
their own story in substance told in this story of 
"The Lost Word." It may be that in an un- 
guarded moment, because of your love for the 
world, and your desire for worldly riches and 
worldly power, you parted with your Saviour, 
who alone can give peace and satisfaction to your 
soul. If that be true, I preach you the mercy of 
God who gives men a second chance when they 
come in the name of Jesus. My friend, Dr. 
Alfred J. Hough, of Vermont, has recently writ- 



THE ANSWER TO LIFE ? S HIDDEN RIDDLE 17 

ten a poem entitled u The God of Another 

Chance/' which ought to be a message of hope 

to your soul: 

A man named Peter stumbled bad, 
Lost all the love he ever had, 
Fouled his own soul's divinest spring, 
Cursed, swore, and all that sort of thing. 
He got another chance, and then 
Reached the far goal of Godlike men. 

Your boy goes wrong, the same as he 
Who fed swine in the far country; 
He seems beyond the utmost reach 
Of hearts that pray, of lips that preach; 
Give him another chance and see 
How beautiful his life may be. 

Paul cast the young man, Mark, aside, 

But Barnabas his metal tried, 

Called out his courage, roused his vim 

And made a splendid man of him. 

Then Paul, near death, longed for one glance 

At Mark, who had another chance. 

King David one dark day fell down, 
Lost every jewel from his crown; 
He had another chance and found 
His kingly self redeemed, recrowned. 
Now lonely souls and countless throngs 
Are shriven by his deathless songs. 

Far-fallen souls, rise up, advance, 
Ours is the God of one more chance. 

Ill 

The riddle of man's peace and abiding hap- 
piness finds its answer in Jesus Christ. In him 
we see a man with none of this world's wealth. 



18 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

not ministered to by others, but ministering to 
others with constant humility and love, and yet 
we find in him the supreme optimist of the ages. 
Nothing could cast him down into despair. No 
persecution, no abuse, no pain, no sorrow, noth- 
ing the world could do to him could put him 
into despair. What was the secret of his peace? 
What was the secret of that abiding joy that 
nothing could overcome or destroy? The secret 
was unselfish service. His life was a constant 
ministration of mercy to the poor and the tempted 
and the sick. His heart and life flowed out, a 
stream of unselfish love. Therefore was he glad 
and his heart at peace. Unselfishness is the su- 
preme heroism. It is not by getting but by giv- 
ing that we tap the fountain of supreme joy. 
Some one says that a man who stands where into 
his life there flows out of the past a great stream 
of benefit which he absorbs and retains is like 
one of those thirsty plains into which flows and 
disappears a mountain stream. The stream has 
trickled down in rain from heaven, in snow from 
the mountain top, and in melting ice in the glacier 
bed. In frost it has riven rocks asunder. In the 
avalanche and the glacier it has plowed and planed 
the mountain side. It has leaped the precipice, 
tunneled the ravine, and flowed along its turbu- 
lent way, until, reaching the plain which it has 
strewn with the sediment and soil of a hundred 



THE ANSWER TO LIFERS HIDDEN RIDDLE 19 

centuries, it laughs and shines and reflects the 
clouds of heaven from under the trees which it 
sustains, amidst the grass of the fields which it 
fertilizes. So on its way it goes, rejoicingly, until 
it reaches a dry and thirsty land, riven and rent 
and undermined by the earthquake and the vol- 
cano. There the stream sinks into the barren 
sands, which are watered but not fertilized. On 
the one side of the line are sparkling waters and 
green fields, on the other side a desert. Such 
is the life of a man who says, "I am my own, and 
what comes to me is mine." He is a desert that 
drinks up the stream of happiness like a sponge 
of sand, but no true joy nor abiding peace can 
blossom and bear fruit in his soul. Alongside a 
man like that, hear Paul crying, "Ye are not your 
own, ye are bought with a price, even the precious 
blood of Christ," and let a man feel that as Paul 
felt it, and let him pour out his life in unselfish- 
ness in the service of his fellow men, and he not 
only blesses them, but his own happiness is as- 
sured. 

Unselfishness is the great key to human peace 
and triumphant joy. Mr. Bingham, the mine 
inspector of Illinois, tells a story connected with 
a cave-in that took place in an Illinois coal mine. 
The earth and coal, in settling, had imprisoned 
sixty men. But there was left an opening between 
where they stood and the outer world through 



20 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

which a small boy could barely crawl. The fore- 
man of the rescuing party said to Fred Evans, a 
boy who worked on the dump: "You are just 
small enough to crawl through that opening and 
drag a pipe with you. If you get that pipe in 
there we shall be able to pump air through it to 
the men to keep them alive until we dig them out. 
But you have to be mighty careful in crawling 
through, because if you jostle the coal, it will 
settle down on you and instantly crush out your 
life. Are you willing to try it ?" The boy's face 
was black with coal soot, his hands bruised from 
toil; he had been so poor all his life that he had 
never been able to learn to read and write, but at 
the same time he was supporting his mother. He 
looked straight into the foreman's eyes, and re- 
plied, "I'll try my best." 

The boy stripped off all the clothing he could 
spare, put a rough cap on his head, grabbed the 
end of the pipe, and began his six-hundred-foot 
crawl in a race against death. Time and again 
the pipe ceased to move, and those at the outer end 
^ thought the boy had been entrapped, but it would 
start up again, and at last a faint call through it 
announced the lad's safe arrival. For a week 
milk, air, and water were forced through that 
pipe, and then the sixty men and the heroic boy 
were restored to their families. 

The governor of Illinois, hearing of the boy's 



THE ANSWER TO LIFERS HIDDEN KIDDLE 21 

unselfish heroism, sent for him. "Youngster/' 
said the governor, "the State of Illinois wants to 
recognize your unselfishness and your pluck. 
What can I do for you ?" Fred Evans nervously 
twitched his fingers about his cap and looked 
frightened at the big man who spoke so kindly to 
him. But finally, finding his voice, he replied, 
"I would like to know how- to read." I need not 
tell you that that boy got his education and I am 
happy to tell you that he is now an intelligent and 
successful farmer in Illinois. But I beg you not 
to overlook the secret of his happy life. It was 
born when he seized his opportunity to risk his 
life and consecrate everything he had to unselfish 
service. Let me repeat it again, that the secret 
of happiness is not in getting, but in giving, and 
it is Jesus Christ who reveals it to us. 

A writer in one of our magazines brings out 
very beautifully that the greatest givers in our 
time are not the millionaires but the men and 
women who give themselves, and he illustrates it 
with Phillips Brooks, who founded no college and 
endowed no hospital, but who is to be counted 
among the greatest givers of his time. Other men 
poured out wealth lavishly for good and great 
ends, and are worthy of all honor, but it was the 
high privilege of the great preacher to give him- 
self with the prodigality of a man possessed of a 
vast treasure ; to pour himself out year after year 



22 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

on the spirits of morally confused, wayward, 
starving people, to whom he gave a vision beyond 
the perplexities of the hour, a clear view of the 
right path and strength to walk in it, the bread 
which feeds the soul. And no man who ever 
caught a glimpse of the great joy of Phillips 
Brooks in such service will ever doubt that un- 
selfish service is the answer to the riddle of man's 
peace. But Phillips Brooks learned it from his 
Lord. Jesus Christ, the great giver brought no 
money, clothes, or food with him. ~No man ever 
had less at his command those things of which 
men usually make gifts ; he was, during the won- 
derful years of his active life, penniless and home- 
less; but he was incomparably the greatest giver 
who has appeared among men. No onr of all the 
great benefactors of mankind has approached him 
in the reach, power, and eternal value of his gifts. 
The secret of his divine generosity is in the sub- 
lime fact that he was, himself, a gift. And O, 
the sublime joy of Jesus Christ ! When he started 
on his last journey to Jerusalem to be crucified 
there was such a glow of heavenly peace on his 
fac^ that his friends could not understand it, for 
he had told them he was going there to die. It 
was for the joy that was set before him that he 
marched straight to Pilate's hall and to the cross. 

I pray that God may teach us the great lesson. 
You want to find your true significance as a man 



THE ANSWER TO LIFERS HIDDEN RIDDLE 23 

or as a woman. You want to fill your place in 
creation. You want that sublime peace, that 
noble joy, which comes from the consciousness 
that you are not beating the air, but that you are 
answering the purpose God has for you in the 
world. The answer to the riddle is in giving your- 
self in loving service for your fellow men. As 
you approach Jesus Christ in unselfishness and 
love, you will approach his sublime peace and his 
triumphant joy that nothing can disturb. In that 
service we shall catch the new song in our hearts 
and go singing down the avenues of the New Year. 

Quit you like men, be strong; 
There's a burden to bear, 
There's a grief to share, 

There's a heart that breaks 'neath a load of care- — 
But fare ye forth with a song. 

Quit you like men, be strong; 
There's a battle to fight, 
There's a wrong to right, 

There's a God who blesses the good with might — 
So fare ye forth with a song. 

Quit you like men, be strong; 

There's a work to do, 

There's a world to make new, 

There's a call for men who are brave and true- 
On! on with a song! 

Quit you like men, be strong; 
There's a year of grace, 
There's a God to face, 

There's another heat in the great world race — 
Speed! speed with a song: 



CHAPTEE II 

The Wall of Fire 

For I, saith Jehovah, will be unto her a wall of fire 
round about, and I will be the glory in the midst of 
her. — Zech. 2. 5. 

This text was uttered more than five hundred 
years before the birth of Christ, a short time after 
the return of the exiles from Babylon. It was a 
most discouraging and dismal time. The city 
was in ruins and the people were but a wreck of 
their former strength and courage. God gave 
these people two prophets for their encouragement 
and inspiration. One of these was Haggai, an 
old man, and the other was this Zechariah, a 
younger man, full of all youthful enthusiasm. 
It has been said that he was the most uniformly 
hopeful of all the prophets. His little book is 
the work of a youthful, imaginative mind, richly 
endowed with poetic gifts, as well as steeped in 
the diviner fount of inspiration. He saw all 
things bathed in the glory of the morning. This 
young prophet paints one picture after another of 
the glorious things which were nigh. The vision 
from which our text is taken begins with the 
prophet's glimpse of a man going to the site of 
the ruined Jerusalem in order to measure it. He 
has a measuring line with which to mark out the 

24 



THE WALL OF FIRE 



25 



length and breadth of the ancient city. It is a 
gloomy and hopeless sort of a task, for the temple 
once so glorious and the scene of so much sacred 
splendor is but a pile of ruins. The old walls 
are broken down; and what houses stand in the 
city are for the most part without inhabitants. 
The old people among the exiles coming back are 
in despair at the sight of the ruins, and the young 
people, who have been born during the captivity, 
and who have heard so much from their parents 
concerning Jerusalem as the city of God, are, of 
course, greatly disappointed at what they see. 

In the prophet's vision, when he saw the young 
man with the measuring line, and he told him he 
was going to measure Jerusalem, there appeared 
two angels, who, listening to what the measurer 
said, one called to the other and told him, in sub- 
stance, to run and overtake the young man and 
tell him that he would not be able to measure 
Jerusalem, that his measuring line was too short 
for the new Jerusalem. The City of God that 
was to be would be so great that it would be im- 
possible to wall it in. It would spread abroad in 
every direction, and it would not need walls of 
stone, for God himself would be a wall of fire 
about it, and his presence would be the glory in 
the midst of the city. 

I think we may find in this picture a theme of 
great comfort and inspiration for ourselves; in- 



t 

26 THE GKEAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

deed, most of it must apply to ourselves. It was 
evidently not intended to apply to the local city 
of Jerusalem. Never did that city become the 
joy of the whole earth. The city of Zechariah's 
dreams was never built; never did all nations 
crowd into it as he hoped. It still has its little 
narrow walls and is to-day in the hands of alien 
masters. But out of Jerusalem has come the city 
without walls. From those ruins sprang Chris- 
tianity, which is the fulfillment of the dream of 
the young prophet. It, therefore, belongs to us, 
and across the gulf of more than two thousand 
years the young Zechariah speaks to us these 
words of inspiration. 

I 

First of all, we may well apply our text to our 
civic and national life. It should teach us that 
our strength is not in numbers, nor in wealth, nor 
in naval or military power, but in the quality of 
our people ; in the fact that we are such a people 
as God can defend, and in the midst of whom he 
may be the inspiration and the glory. We have 
recently taken our census, and some cities and 
some States are inclined to boast a good deal con- 
cerning their growth in numbers or in material 
wealth, and we are in danger of forgetting that 
such things have never made any nation secure. 
Greece and Rome and all the old nations that 



THE WALL OF FIRE 



27 



once were glorious and have passed into decay 
were most populous and most wealthy and most 
powerful when they were nearest their ruin. True 
greatness of a city or a State or a nation is not 
the kind that you can measure with a measuring 
line or with a census-taker's notebook. It does 
not depend upon quantity so much as upon quality. 
The greatness of a people does not depend upon 
their numbers so much as upon their virtues ; it 
does not depend upon their wealth so much as 
upon their character, their devotion to God, their 
fidelity to true manhood and true womanhood. 
If God is like a wall of fire around a city or a 
nation, if he dwells in the midst of the people 
and is their true pride and glory, then that people 
is safe. But if we care more for money than we 
do for men; if we care more for business than 
we do for children ; if we care more for material 
things than we do for pleasing God, then there is 
no power in military force or naval strength that 
can save the nation. The American people need 
to hear the message that Eudyard Kipling sounded 
in the ears of the English people at the time of 
Queen Victoria's jubilee : 

God of our fathers, known of old, 
Lord of our far-flung battle line, 

Beneath whose awful hand we hold 
Dominion over palm and pine: 

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 

Lest we forget, lest we forget! 



28 THE GKEAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

The tumult and the shouting dies; 

The captains and the kings depart; 
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, 

An humble and a contrite heart: 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
Lest we forget, lest we forget! 

Far-called our navies melt away, 

On dune and headland sinks the fire; 

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday 
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! 

Judge of the nations, spare us yet, 

Lest we forget, lest we forget; 

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose 
Wild tongues that have not thee in awe, 

Such boasting as the Gentiles use 
Or lesser breeds without the law: 

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 

Lest we forget, lest we forget! 

For heathen heart that puts her trust 

In reeking tube and iron shard; 
All valiant dust that builds on dust, 

And guarding calls not thee to guard: 
For frantic boast and foolish word, 
Thy mercy on thy people, Lord! 

We may well apply our theme to the Christian 
church of our day. If the church is to win and 
do its great work to-day as in the past, it must be 
because God is a wall of fire about it and his pres- 
ence is the glory in the midst. The church, like 
the state, is always tempted to believe that its 
strength is in material things, and it was per- 
haps never more tempted than to-day. Robertson 



THE WALL OF FIRE 



29 



iucoll recently wrote that the temptations of the 
modern church are practically the same as the 
temptations of Jesus during his lifetime. The 
devil said to Christ when he was an hungered, 
that the most important thing in the world was 
to command that the stones be made bread, that 
he might feed himself. But Jesus quoted the 
Word of God, that man should not live by bread 
alone, and that the divine Word was infinitely 
more important to him than bread for his trem- 
bling body. We are in the midst of that same 
temptation in the Christian Church to-day, the 
temptation to satisfy our consciences by caring 
only for the material interests of men and women. 
It is not hard to find large church plants where 
the soup kitchen and the gymnasium attract far 
more attention than the pulpit or the prayer room. 
This has been born of a tempter who said that 
"Man's primary concern and first claim must be 
to have all his physical wants supplied ; and so 
long as there is hunger, or thirst, or cold, or naked- 
ness, or sickness, or pain in the world, the heavenly 
Voice which speaks of sonship to God must be 
stilled. It will be time enough to introduce the 
higher life when the lower has been thoroughly 
secured." Over against that, Jesus Christ says, 
"Seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteous- 
ness; and all these things shall be added unto 
you." 



30 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

Another temptation of the church to-day is 
paralleled in the temptation with which the people 
approached Christ. They begged Jesus for signs. 
They promised him their souls if he would make 
a sufficiently overpowering impression on their 
senses. If he would only make them see and hear 
wonderful things that would make their hair stand 
on end with curious terror, then they would be 
his disciples. The devil also said to him, "Cast 
yourself down from the temple." But Christ 
never yielded to that temptation. All his signs 
were works of love. £Tow, the same temptation 
besets the church to-day. It is born of the desire 
to get the crowd, which is a most holy desire if 
our one motive is to win them to Christ. But it 
is easy to attract the crowd and nothing be done 
to God's purpose. The temptation in its cruder 
form is to bald sensationalism; in its more re- 
fined form it is to the aesthetic or artistic develop- 
ment of worship. And this is often effective, and 
often means just as little as the sensationalism for 
the glory of God and the salvation of men. 

There is still another temptation which was 
also one of the temptations of Christ. Christ saw 
the marvelous power which evil had in the world. 
It had immense resources. The temptation was 
this : Was it not possible to make use of evil some- 
how? Was there not some craft or policy by 
which the loan of it might be taken for a time? 



THE WALL OF FIRE 



31 



by which its right to exist might be recognized, 
temporarily, of course, and under conditions so 
that the Son of God might profit by it till it be- 
came practicable for him to do without it ? (Ex- 
actly the same thing as licensing the liquor traffic 
to help pay the school bills or pave the rock roads, 
until we can get along without it.) It was Satan 
boasting of his power and offering it to Christ on 
terms which meant the complete prostration of his 
mission. In the passion with which Jesus repels 
this temptation, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" we 
seem to hear him saying to himself what he says 
to us all, "What shall it profit a man, if he gain 
the whole world and lose himself?" 

The application of this temptation to the 
church is painfully plain. It teaches that the 
only power in which the work of God can be 
done is the power of God. When Israel made al- 
liance with outside and wicked tribes it meant 
her ruin; and so to-day the patronage of a man 
whose character is not good does not strengthen 
the weakest church in town or country, no matter 
what his wealth or social or political position may 
be. No, you cannot measure a church with a 
tape-line. You cannot measure the strength of a 
church by counting its numbers, or the wealth of 
its membership, or the social position of its con- 
gregation. You cannot measure it that way be- 
cause its power is spiritual; its walls are not of 



32 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

stone. If the church is indeed safe, it is because 
God is a wall of fire about it, and he dwells in the 
midst of it, its true glory. 

I should like to apply this to our own local 
church. I would to God that we, every one of us, 
could see and feel that what we need above every- 
thing else to make our own church true to the 
mission of Jesus Christ in this world is not more 
of material things but more of the spiritual pres- 
ence. What we need to draw men and women to 
us in multitudes to hear the gospel is, above 
everything else, that the spirit of the ever-living 
God shall be the glory in the midst of us, and that 
the wall of divine fire shall be round about us. 
All this is within our reach, for God not only 
inhabiteth eternity, he not only dwells in the high 
and lofty places, but he loves the humble and the 
contrite heart. There is one place where a man 
may make sure that the glorious presence of Jesus 
Christ will always be with him, and that is where 
with loving tenderness he seeks to win his fellow 
man away from his sins to repentance and sur- 
render to Christ as his Lord and Redeemer. Give 
us the passion of the soul-savers, and our church 
will have a wall of fire about it and a glory in 
the midst of it that will attract the world to it. 
I wish we could feel what Paul felt when he said, 
"I wish that my soul were accursed from Christ 
for my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the 



THE WALL OF FIRE 



33 



flesh" ; I wish we knew what John Knox felt when 
he cried, "Give me Scotland, or I die!" And 
God gave Scotland to John Knox. 

Spurgeon once said that a bird when it is sit- 
ting on its eggs, or when the little ones are newly 
hatched, has about it a mother spirit, so that it 
devotes all of its life to the feeding of its little 
ones; other birds may be taking their pleasures 
on the wing, but this bird sits still, the livelong 
day and night, or its only flights are to provide 
for gaping mouths which seem to be never filled. 
A passion has taken possession of the bird; and 
something like it comes over the true soul-winner. 
He would gladly die to win souls ; he pines, he 
pleads, he plods to bless those on whom his heart 
is set. If these could be saved, he would pawn 
half his heaven for it; aye, and sometimes, in 
moments of enthusiasm, he is ready to barter 
heaven altogether to win souls. Give us a passion 
like that in this church, so that we all feel that 
all our work connected with the church, Sunday 
and week day, fails of its supreme purpose unless 
it is redeeming the lost ; unless it is winning back 
men and women who are in danger of eternal 
defeat, and nothing can stand in the way of our 
spiritual conquest. Earthly walls will no more 
be important. God will be about us, a wall of 
fire, and within us the altar will blaze with 
glory and splendor — not our glory, nor our 



34 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

splendor, but the glory and the splendor of the 
• infinite God. 

Ill 

Let its for a moment apply our text and our 
theme to ourselves, to the individual. The old 
Hebrew would not have dared do that, but under 
the new dispensation, every sincere follower of 
Jesus Christ is a king and a priest unto God, and 
our theme is as true of each one of us as of the 
state or the church. You cannot measure a man's 
Christianity by his profession, or by his outward 
or spectacular relation to the church, whether he be 
in the pulpit or the pew. Our religion amounts to 
nothing unless it brings with it an inner experience. 
The purpose of Christianity to you and to me is 
to create within us an inner life which is the 
glory in the midst of our life, in the midst of our 
career, which throws about us a wall of fire and 
fills us with glorious joy and triumph. Our faith 
in Christ is not a true faith if it does not bring 
into our hearts a living and vital consciousness of 
the presence of God. When that is true of us, the 
Spirit of God dwells there. Peace, purity, and love 
are within us, and that inward light guides us 
and stimulates our actions and determines our 
conduct day by day. It is not a question to be de- 
bated what we will do in a matter of right or 
wrong. We know, and other people know, that, 
as God gives us to see it, we will do the right. 



THE WALL OF FIRE 



35 



Whatever the outer trials may be, within the soul 
there is peace. This glorious presence of God in 
the heart is the secret of the Christian life. And 
nothing else can really ever give peace. A little 
reflection makes us know that is true. Put a man 
into the most desirable worldly position, give him 
all that his fond dreams go out after, but let him 
be out of harmony with these surroundings which 
he has anticipated so gladly, and what is the re- 
sult ? Is he happy when his dreams are realized ? 
No, indeed. But, on the other hand, the martyrs 
were cast into the dark, noisome dungeons; they 
were treated cruelly and subjected to every con- 
ceivable form of brutal torture, but they were not 
miserable. In spite of it all, they realized the 
truth voiced by Richard Lovelace when he says : 

Stone walls do not a prison make, 

Nor iron bars a cage; 
Minds innocent and quiet take 

That for an hermitage. 

John Milton once sang: 

The mind is its own place, and in itself 

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 

And these poets are true to life. You cannot 
measure what will make human happiness by a 
measuring line. You cannot add it up into col- 
umns and put a dollar mark in front of it and 
say like the rich fool, "Soul, thou hast much 
goods laid up for many years/' and thus guarantee 



36 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

your happiness. ISTo ; happiness comes from with- 
in. It is not material but spiritual ; and the 
power to be useful comes from within also. A 
man's power, his strength, is from within. The 
safe man, the strong man, the invincible man, is 
the man about whom God is a wall of fire and 
within whose heart God dwells as the glory in 
the midst. 

I wonder if any of you ever saw Bella Cook in 
ISTew York. She was left a widow at twenty- 
seven. At thirty-five she became bedridden, an 
absolute pauper so far as this world can see. If 
you had added up her financial resources, you 
would not have found ten cents. She had not 
physical strength enough to walk across the room. 
But she was rich in the unsearchable riches of 
Christ. There were no walls of money or physical 
power about her, but God was about her, the wall 
of fire, and within her, irradiating her face, speak- 
ing peace and triumph to her soul; he was the 
glory in the midst. She was bedridden for fifty- 
two years, and for all that half a century she was 
one of the greatest personalities in "New York. 
Women worth millions in this world's gold often 
left their carriages standing in front of her hum- 
ble rooms, and pillowed their heads on her bed 
and sobbed out their hearts while Bella Cook 
prayed for them. She became the center of a 
great charitable work. Through the money God 



THE WALL OF FIRE 



37 



sent she reached out into the cellars and byways 
of the poorest sections of a great, wicked city with 
streams of blessing, and for over half a century, 
as a sort of illustration of the divine power to 
beautify a helpless life, God made her existence 
a perpetual inspiration to faith in him. 

May God give us this great lesson to-day. Let 
us not go away counting up our resources in phys- 
ical strength or wealth, and leaving out of ac- 
count the strength that never fails and the wealth 
that no panic can change or lose. Some of you 
will never be strong again in the kind of strength 
that you once knew in your youth, but you may 
be secure with the wall of fire about you. Some 
of us will never have much money, and all our 
lives we may have to deny ourselves many of the 
luxuries that other people rejoice in, but we may 
be rich in the coin that alone can purchase true 
happiness and peace in life or death. We may 
not be able to do for the world what we would 
like to do, but if the ever-living God is the glory 
in the midst of our hearts, sweetening and beau- 
tifying our character and conduct, we shall be able 
to bring blessing and hope to everyone that comes 
in living touch with us. I covet for myself and 
I covet for every one of you, more than any earth- 
ly good, that the ever-living God shall be a wall 
of fire about us, and that he shall be the glory in 
our midst. O, if we may only lose our self-seeking 



38 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

in our supreme desire to show Christ as the 
"Glory in the midst/' then in his own good time 
we shall come to our reward and shall realize what 
the poet sings of one such faithful servant of 
Christ: 

He held the lamp of truth that day 
So low that none could miss the way; 
And yet so high to bring in sight 
That picture fair, the world's true Light, 
And gazing up, the lamp between, 
The hand that held it scarce was seen. 

He held the pitcher, stooping low, 
To lips of little ones below; 
Then raised it to the weary saint, 
The weak, the weary, or the faint. 
They drank — the pitcher thus between, 
The hand that held it scarce was seen. 

But when the Captain says, "Well done, 

Thou good and faithful servant. Come! 

Lay down the pitcher and the lamp, 

Lay down the trumpet— leave the camp"— 

Thy weary hands will then be seen 

Clasped in those pierced ones — naught between. 



CHAPTEK III 



Old Portrait of Christ 

I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of 
the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man. — 
Rev. 1. 12, IS. 

This text is connected with the most wonder- 
ful word picture of Christ to be found anywhere 
in the Bible. In the Gospels there is no attempt 
anywhere to describe the personal appearance of 
Jesus, but here, in figurative language, we have 
a wonderful portrait of the Master. No man on 
earth, in that day, knew more perfectly the ap- 
pearance of Christ than John. It was John who 
was known in the group of Christ's friends as "the 
disciple whom Jesus loved." But even John, 
when he comes to paint the portrait of his Master, 
does it in figurative language which describes the 
spiritual rather than the physical. It is a won- 
derful portrait, this Christ of the candlesticks, 
with his snow-white hair, and his golden girdle, 
and eyes flaming like fire, and feet shining like 
burnished brass, and his voice like many waters, 
a hand full of stars, his speech like a glittering 
sword, his countenance flashing like the sun, and 
holding the keys of eternal destiny. Surely here 

39 



40 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



is a picture to awaken our awe and inspire our 
study. 

i 

The first thought that challenges us from this 
theme is the description which is given of the 
head of Christ, "And his head and his hair were 
white as white wool, white as snow." We have 
suggested here the purity of Christ's thought and 
wisdom, as well as the nobility of his thought. 
No other man in history has approached Christ as 
a thinker on a high and lofty plane, and yet Jesus 
never traveled save on foot, or on the back of a 
donkey, and then never outside the little land of 
Palestine, which was much smaller than the 
State of Missouri. He was the son of a poor 
village carpenter and never had any opportunities 
for schooling except such as would come to the 
ordinary Hebrew child in the synagogue. And 
yet at thirty years of age he uttered thoughts of 
such authority and power that they lead the 
highest thought of the world to-day. In the Ser- 
mon on the Mount there are stated truths of social 
and religious importance that the very foremost 
thinkers, after two thousand years of progress in 
civilization, can barely understand and have not 
the courage to apply fully to the solution of the 
problems of our own time. No other man has 
ever approached the Sermon on the Mount for 
purity and nobility of thought, and importance 



AN OLD PORTRAIT OF CHRIST 



41 



of statement; but even that Jesus Christ sur- 
passed in his last great address to his disciples. 
The greatest minds in every department of hu- 
man effort have bowed low before the white 
thought of Jesus Christ. Shakespeare and Ga- 
lileo, Kepler, Newton, Bacon, and Milton put the 
wreath of their honor and their reverence on the 
head of Jesus Christ. Jean Paul Richter says 
that Christ, "The holiest among the mighty, the 
mightiest among the holy, lifted with his pierced 
hands empires off their hinges, turned the stream 
of centuries out of its channel, and still governs 
the ages." The world in its thinking has never 
caught up with Jesus Christ. The great men of 
one generation are surpassed by the average men 
of the next generation, so swiftly does the current 
of invention and intellectual and moral progress 
carry the world onward; but Jesus is as far ahead 
to-day as he was a thousand years ago. It is be- 
cause he is not a mere man; he is the God-man, 
and his divine thought leads and masters the race. 
Tennyson sings: 

Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 

Believing where we cannot prove. 

Thine are these orbs of light and shade; 

Thou madest Life in man and brute; 

Thou madest Death; and lo! thy foot 
Is on the skull which thou hast made. 



42 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

Thou seemest human and divine, 
The highest, holiest manhood thou; 
Our wills are ours, we know not how; 

Our wills are ours to make them thine. 

II 

We have suggested the burning vision of Jesus 
Christ. "And his eyes were as a flame of fire." 
Vision is the most wonderful thing in the world. 
Just the ordinary, common vision of the eye is 
one of the most glorious gifts of God. We can 
never be grateful enough for the eyes God has 
given us. Our eyes are cameras that go on tak- 
ing pictures all day long. The kinetoscope that 
gives us the moving pictures seems a great inven- 
tion, but both the camera and the kinetoscope are 
very poor things in comparison with the eye of the 
ordinary boy or girl. But there is a vision higher 
than that— a vision of the mind; a vision of the 
soul, a vision that sees into the heart of things. 
A vision like that which the poet has, or the artist, 
showing what our eyes have taken photographs of, 
when we see it through their eyes, whether painted 
on the canvas or illumiated in the poem, seems 
to us to be infinitely exalted and enlarged in its 
beauty. How beautiful the world must have 
looked to Jesus Christ ! What a glorious thing it 
must have been to stroll through the fields, and 
across the pastures, and through the woods 
with Jesus, and to hear him talk about trees 



OLD PORTRAIT OF CHRIST 



43 



and flowers and birds ! We have some of his 
words in the Gospels ; but how little we have you 
can imagine when one of his disciples says that 
if they had written down everything Jesus said, 
the whole world could not have contained the 
books. That, of course, is an exaggerated form 
of statement, but by it he means to suggest to us 
that those beautiful stories and parables which 
we have in the Gospels, and which are the ad- 
miration and illumination of the ages, are only 
here and there a rare jewel picked up out of the 
great mine of the Saviour's conversation. 

But Jesus had a higher vision still. Those eyes 
that flamed like fire looked into the hearts of men 
and women and saw what other people did not see. 
At a glance Jesus saw the goodness of Nathanael 
and cried aloud, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in 
whom is no guile !" Passing through Jericho, 
Jesus looked up into the sycamore tree where 
Zacchseus, the hated taxgatherer, sat crouched on 
its limb, and, looking deep into his eyes, the 
Master saw the hunger of his soul for goodness, 
and called him down out of the tree, and through 
the sneering crow r d that could see nothing but a 
cheat and a grafter in Zacchseus, Christ went 
home with him and brought salvation to his 
house. Christ went over to Gadara, and beneath 
the demon-like conduct of the wild man whom 
everybody feared, Christ saw a beautiful evangel 



44 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

of his gospel, and called him forth from his im- 
prisonment of evil. In Saul, the wicked young 
bigot, on his way to Damascus, Christ saw the 
possible Paul, the hero and the saint, and re- 
deemed him. In that poor lost woman who was 
about to be stoned to death, the clear-eyed vision 
of Christ saw the beautiful womanhood lying dor- 
mant, and bravely brought it forth into being, 
and gave to her a character fragrant with incense 
while time shall last. O thou Christ of the flam- 
ing eyes, look deep into our hearts, make us con- 
scious of thy vision! Give us a glimpse of the 
loveliness which thou seest possible for us, that w^ 
may awaken to our privileges in thee ! 

Ill 

In the shining feet which were like burnished 
brass heated in the furnace we have suggested 
the glory which Christ puts on service of hu- 
/ manity. Christ revolutionized the world when 
he washed the feet of his disciples and declared 
that the new order should be different from the 
old. He tells his disciples that among worldly 
men the great man was ministered to and taken 
care of, but under the new order the man who 
would be great must also be minister and servant. 
Christ brought heaven's best down to minister to 
earth's lowest and poorest. And so he started in 
the world the ministry of the strong for the weak; 



AN OLD PORTRAIT OF CHRIST 45 

of the pure for the sinful ; of the rich for the 
poor. The foundation stone of every hospital on 
the globe, of every orphan asylum, of every old- 
couples' home, of every house of refuge and 
mercy that ministers to men and women in sick- 
ness and age and weakness, was laid that day 
when the Christ of the towel declared the new 
order of the ministry of the highest for the lowest. 

Christ established a new order of. greatness — 
the great servant. And the world has caught up 
this new idea of what constitutes true greatness 
in a remarkable degree. Call over the men and 
women whom the world has specially enthroned 
in its heart as immortal representatives of the 
race in the last century or two, and you will find 
that there is no Caesar, nor Napoleon, nor world- 
monster who fed on lust of power simply, among 
them. 'No; they are the men like Washington, 
who would not be a king, but was always ready to 
serve his country at his own charges; men like 
Lincoln, whose broad shoulders were pushed 
under the heaviest loads the government ever had 
to carry. There were no other shoulders broad 
enough to carry the burdens through those years 
of national agony. He was not brilliant, he was 
not handsome, he was awkward and backwoods- 
like and ugly; but he so served the people that 
by the universal franchise of American hearts he 
became the most beautiful and glorious citizen of 



46 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

the republic, He became so because he was its 
greatest servant. A hundred princes lived, and 
were petted, and in their turn sickened and died 
in the days of John Howard. The world will 
never think of them again, and would not know 
their names^ if they were recalled. They were 
ministered Jte/ a hundredfold more than he, there- 
fore they are forgotten. But he, who put aside 
ease, and luxurious comfort, and, facing all man- 
ner of opposition, went down into prison and dun- 
geon, making the cause of hated and forgotten 
criminals his very own, until, like Paul, he felt 
that he was bound with them in chains, became 
one of the world's heroes and immortals. He be- 
came such because he had been one of its truest 
and most unselfish servants. 

In the days of the Crimea England was full 
of women who were ministered to by unlimited 
luxury and wealth, and whose smiles dazzled the 
social world. They have long been forgotten. 
But the English girl who left home and friends 
and went out among the suffering and desponding 
and wounded soldiers, and served them with a 
self-sacrifice and a devotion that was like her 
divine Lord, made the name of Florence Nightin- 
gale not only immortal, but caused it to be "like 
ointment poured forth" as long as time shall last. 
She is crowned because she was the greatest serv- 
ant of her time. 



AA T OLD PORTRAIT OF CM HIST 



47 



The greatest scientist, in the opinion of the 
rank and file of mankind, during the last genera- 
tion, was Pasteur, because it was he who helped 
the world to cleanse its drinking water, and pluck 
the virus out of the bite of the mad dog, and give 
a better chance to save childhood. He wa^/the 
greatest servant science gave the world m his 
day. And so, my friends, there is one place 
where you may be sure to find Jesus Christ, and 
that is wherever you give yourself to humble and 
loving service for your fellows. Whenever we do 
that we shall realize the poet's vision : 

I bend to help a little straying child 
And soothe away its fears, 

When, lo, the Wondrous Babe, all undefiled, 
Looks at me through its tears. 

Beside a cot I kneel with pitying eyes; 

A dying brow I fan — 
The pallet seems a cross, and on it lies 

One like the Son of man! 

The way is long, and when I pause to share 

My cup, my crust of bread, 
With some poor wanderer — O vision rare — 

A halo crowns his head! 

O'er sin's dark stream there comes a drowning cry; 

Its woeful tide I stem, 
And grasp for one who sinks — the Christ is there, 

I touch his garment's hem. 

O Presence, ever new and ever dear, 

My Master, can it be, 
In thy great day of coming, I shall hear, 

"Thou didst it unto me"? 



48 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



IV 

We have also suggested the authority of Jesus. 
His speech is like a sword, his voice like the noise 
of many waters, in one hand he holds the stars, 
and in the other the keys of destiny. We have 
been having a strange and disconcerting ques- 
tion sounded recently in our religious papers and 
magazines, asking whether our Lord was Jesus 
or Christ. Thank God, he is both. Canon Hen- 
son well says that the identification of Jesus and 
Christ took place at the very beginning of Chris- 
tianity. It is the obvious assumption of all the 
New Testament writers, and almost immediately 
it received its formal expression in the double 
name of J esus Christ, as is often used in the New 
Testament. The disciples were led to believe in 
Jesus as the Christ by their own close intimacy 
with him during his ministry. There is no rea- 
sonable doubt that before the crucifixion he had 
claimed to be the Christ, and that they had in- 
dorsed his claim. Jesus himself had challenged 
them on the point, "Whom do men say that I the 
Son of man am ?" he had asked them. And when 
they had replied by stating the various opinions 
respecting him which were current among the 
people, he asks again, "But whom say ye that I 
am?" To that question Peter made answer in 
the tremendous confession, "Thou art the Christ." 
That was the first Christian creed : "I believe that 



AN OLD PORTRAIT OF CHRIST 49 

Jesus is the Christ." To separate the two names 
and propose a choice between them is to stultify 
the witness of the apostles from the first. 

Christ never spoke with such many-toned au- 
thority as at present. He never spoke so strongly 
in philosophy as to-day. All the great philoso- 
phies that stood up against Jesus have gone down 
in defeat. He never spoke so powerfully in 
science as now, when all the greatest scientists 
bow reverently before him. He has long been 
the dominant voice in art, in poetry, and litera- 
ture. We have already seen how he dominates 
the social world in the problems of men's rela- 
tions to each other; but in the greatest of all 
realms — in the individual human soul — Christ 
speaks with authority and holds the keys of eter- 
nal destiny. It is only Christ who has power to 
come into a man's heart and cause his own vitality 
for righteousness to become the red blood in the 
man's nature, casting off all evil things. 

Some of you have been where you have seen 
the scrub oak in winter time. You have noticed 
how r it was the last of all the trees of the wood 
to lose its leaves. Indeed, it never loses its leaves 
by the mere force of the winter. Storms sweep 
over the woods, but the scrub-oak leaves, yellow 
and withered and dead, cling as tight as ever. 
The great storms shake the trees, but the leaves 
seem to laugh back grimly in the teeth of the 



50 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

storm; the sharp cold comes on and the frost, 
keen and cutting, cleans every other tree, but the 
scrub-oak leaves grit their teeth and stay on. 
Neither frost nor storm has power to take away 
the leaves of this tough little tree. But if you 
watch as the winter draws to a close, when the 
frost begins to lose its grip, and the sun rises high 
in the heavens and delays its sunset at eventime, 
the life comes pulsing up the oak tree and the 
sap pushes out into the branches clear to the 
finger tips, where the leaves of last year have so 
stubbornly held their own, and then you see them 
beginning to drop off; the life within is push- 
ing them off. 

So, my friend, you see a man trying to quit his 
bad habits, and you sympathize with him, for 
you know he is sincere and honest, and truly de- 
sires to get rid of the habits that shame him and 
hurt him; but he fails. All sorts of reformatory 
methods are tried. A godly father or mother 
prays for him. His wife pleads and weeps and 
prays. Sometimes many friends with combined 
efforts seek to hedge him about and strengthen 
him for righteousness, so that he may shed these 
wicked habits from which he longs to be free. 
But all fail. Then, some day, this man comes 
into the presence of Jesus Christ, and through 
some divine appeal he opens his heart and lets 
the Christ into his soul, and lo, like the scrub-oak 



AX OLD PORTRAIT OF CHRIST 



51 



tree in the springtime, whose leaves are pushed 
off by the new lifeblood within, this man sud- 
denly loses his sins, and his wicked habits, and 
puts out new leaves and new blossoms, full of 
fragrance of love and goodness. He casts off the 
old habits because within him the lifeblood from 
heaven pushes off the old leaves of his evil life 
and sends forth the new growth which is of 
Christ. Ah, no one speaks withjiuthority in the 
human soul like Jesus Christ. 

Mr. Moody went one day to the Fulton Street 
prayer meeting in ISTew York city and a man who 
heard him speak came to him and said, "Will you 
go to the Tombs to-morrow and preach?" Mr. 
Moody agreed to do so, and went, supposing the 
prisoners would be brought into the chapel; but, 
to his horror, he found he had to speak to them 
in their cells. He had never tried that. It was 
hard work to preach to people he could not see. 
There were two rows of cells above him and one 
below, and he stood and talked to some four hun- 
dred prisoners in that way. 

Afterv/ard he thought he would like to look at 
his audience, and he went to the door of the first 
cell. There was a little window to let light and 
air in, and there were two in that cell playing 
cards. He had no doubt they had been playing 
cards all the time he was preaching. Moody said 
to them, "How did you come here?" "We got 



52 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

into bad company," said one, "and the man who 
did the deed got free, but we got in." At another 
cell the prisoner said : "I am going to have a new 
trial ; I don't belong here. A man went into court 
and swore a lie." Mr. Moody said he never found 
so many innocent men in all his life, and he made 
up his mind that human nature is the same under 
lock and key as outside. "Well," he said to the 
jailer, "I am going to go through this jail and 
see if I can find a sinner." 

It took a long time, but at last he found a man 
on the lower tier, all alone. He had his face in 
his hands, and Mr. Moody stopped at his window 
and asked, "What's the trouble?" 

"My sins are more than I can bear." 

"Ah, thank God !" said Moody. 

"You thank God that my sins are more than 
I can bear? Why, aren't you the man who 
preached to us ? I thought you said you were the 
friend of the prisoners. I don't understand that 
kind of friendship." 

Moody said, "I have been looking for you; I 
have been hunting for you." And for half an 
hour he preached the Christ to that man. It was 
like a cup of cold water to a thirsty man. He was 
"lost," and after he had talked a long time with 
him, Mr. Moody said, "Get down on your knees 
and we will pray." 

The poor fellow said, "I can't pray." Then 



OLD PORTRAIT OF CHRIST 53 

he told Mr. Moody how bad he had been. His 
catalogue of sin was as dark and vile, as black as 
hell; but it was refreshing to be able to tell him 
that Christ is the One that cleanseth from all sin 
and can save unto the uttermost. 

Moody said to him, "Pray." 

And the poor fellow took his head away from 
the iron bedstead and cried to God for mercy; 
"O God, have mercy on me, a vile wretch." 

Mr. Moody got so interested in the man that 
he could hardly leave him. His heart went out 
to him. He seemed like a brother of his, a friend. 
At last he said, "At night, I will be at the hotel, 
and between nine and ten I will be praying for 
you, and I want you to meet me at the mercy- 
seat." 

That night Moody had great liberty in prayer ; 
he was led out so in prayer that he could not take 
the midnight train for Chicago, and felt he must 
see that prisoner again. He went to the Tombs, 
and the officer let him talk with the prisoner ; and 
the moment he heard Moody's voice he put his 
hand out through the bars and got hold of Moody's 
hand and pressed it, and the hot tears of joy fell 
over his face, as he told how that night God had 
come to his soul. 

Ah, that is what Jesus Christ can do in a hu- 
man heart. He speaks there with authority. Let 
him speak in your heart unto salvation ! 



CHAPTER IV 

The Traveler's Hope : A New Year's Sermon 
Thou art . . . thou shalt be. — John 1. 42. 
We are accustomed to think of the journey of 
life as extending from the cradle to the grave in 
a straight line. There are hills and valleys to 
be traversed; there are rivers to cross; there are 
oceans to sail over; but despite all its irregulari- 
ties, it is for the greater part a dead-level prairie 
journey of routine that we conjure in our im- 
agination when we think of the paths which the 
human traveler must tread from childhood to 
manhood, and on to old age and the sunset. The 
new years and the birthdays are milestones on 
that journey of life. Every one passed means 
that we are farther away from the beginning and 
nearer to the end of the journey. The path yet 
to be traveled is, of course, uncertain, as all life 
is uncertain, but its general characteristics are 
largely discounted by observation and history. 
We are on the way home, and multitudes are 
traveling with us to the same common end of the 
journey. We see what the poet saw when he sang: 

I saw them come over the water, I saw them go down 

through the land, 
Some lonely on feet that were weary, some smiling, 

with hand clasped in hand; 

54 



THE TRAVELER'S HOPE 



55 



"And where are you going?" I questioned; O what do 

they see where they roam, 
That their eyes seem to dwell on a vision? "Home 

home — they are traveling home!" 

I saw them come out of the cities, I saw them go over 
the hill; 

I saw little children, old people, smart sons of the 

forge and the mill; 
The young with the feet of light dancing; the old 

with a yearning for rest; 
"They are traveling home," said the shadow, "to lie 

down on the dear mother-breast!" 

I saw them in shadow and sunshine, I saw them at 

dawn and at night, 
Go on, and go on, and go over the road to the lilt of 

delight; 

Diviner than anything human the glow on their faces 
who roam: 

"They are traveling home," cried the shadow; "home, 
home — they are traveling home!" 

It is a different thought of the new year and 
of man as a traveler that I have in my mind this 
morning. I speak in my thought to travelers, 
and not to travelers onward, only, but to travelers 
upward. I speak not of the journey as from 
youth to age, but of man's journey in character, 
the mountain-climbing of the soul, the progress 
which it is possible to make in the journey of 
the spirit from lower to higher levels of life. 

Our text, taken in connection with its story, 
beautifully suggests this theme. Andrew had 
found Jesus Christ and loved him and believed him 



56 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

to be the Messiah. He went and found Simon, 
his brother, and brought him to Jesus, and Jesus, 
who knew what was in man, and who read the 
human heart and mind at a glance, saw at once 
who it was that had come to see him. This man 
Simon was a bluff, frank, open-hearted man, but 
he was an unstable character, passionate, the crea- 
ture of his impulses, whom nobody could depend 
upon to stick to anything long at a time — that 
was the kind of a man whom Andrew brought to 
Christ, in Simon. And Jesus, looking down into 
his very soul and reading his instability through 
and through, said to him in substance : "Thou art 
Simon, the unreliable, the unstable, the undepend- 
able man; but thou shalt be Cephas, or Peter, 
the solid rock, against which all the storms of the 
world and the flesh and the devil shall not be able 
to prevail." What a splendid journey it was that 
Christ outlined for Peter ! What a climb upward 
from the yielding, uncertain sands to the solid 
rock of ages, as immovable as the throne of God. 
Here, then, we have our theme, the traveler's hope 
for the higher and holier nature ; the dependable, 
reliable character, the splendid achievement out- 
lined by Jesus Christ. O that God would speak 
to every one of our souls and say to us, "Thou 
art," and let us see our frailties, our weaknesses, 
our imperfections, our sins, and then say to us ? 
"Thou shalt be," and give us a glimpse of the 



THE TRAVELERS HOPE 



57 



solid rock of character, glorious in the light of 
heaven, up which it is possible, through associa- 
tion and fellowship with Jesus Christ, for us to 
climb. 

I 

As we face the new year, our theme ought to 
be a call to faith and joy. Perhaps some of you 
are saying to yourselves as I announce it : "I am 
anything but joyous now. The burdens are too 
heavy, the way is too dark, life is too hard to talk 
to me about joy." Ah, but this is only the begin- 
ning. "Thou art" sorrowful, depressed, gloomy; 
but if you will yield your heart to Christ and live 
in his spirit of faith in God and absolute reliance 
on him, "thou shalt be" filled with rejoicing, and 
life shall enlarge in beauty and peace as the days 
go on. 

I think the most popular sin among good peo- 
ple is the lack of joy, lack of appreciation of the 
beauty and blessedness of the universe in which 
God has placed us, and the abundant gifts which 
he is constantly bestowing upon us. Paul gave it 
as a command, "Rejoice always," and he illus- 
trated it in his own life. I have recently read a 
discourse by Dr. Robert Horton, of London, in 
which he calls attention to the severity with 
which the great mediaeval teacher and poet, Dante, 
treats the vice of solemness and depression of 
spirit. He finds in one of the circles of hell the 



58 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

angry are being punished, but in the same circle 
are the solemn. It is a dismal lake, and floating 
upon the surface of the lake are these angry souls, 
that are literally biting and devouring one an- 
other. The guide calls his attention to the fact 
that upon the surface of the lake are breaking 
bubbles everywhere, and he says that these arise 
from the submerged souls of the solemn. "These 
are they," he says, "who in the world filled the 
world with sighs, and now in this world" — this 
world of the lost spirits — "the sighs break up from 
the dismal waters and form the bubbles on the 
surface." And then these unhappy, submerged 
souls explain. "We were sad," they sighed, "in 
the sweet air which is gladdened by the sun, car- 
rying within us the acrid fumes ; and now we are 
sad in this black mire." But, not content with 
that, when Dante gets into the circle of the violent, 
he surprises us by dividing them into three groups. 
There are the violent against their fellow men, 
there are the violent against themselves, and there 
are the violent against God. And, in his curious 
way, he proceeds to tell us that the violent against 
themselves are not only suicides, they are not only 
gamblers and squanderers of their faculties, but 
also those who mourn where they ought to be 
joyous. And, in his description of the violent 
against God, he surprises us again by including 
in the violent against God not only blasphemers 



THE TRAVELER'S HOPE 



59 



and the profane, not only they who are guilty of 
the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, but also those 
who scorn nature and her beauty. So that, accord- 
ing to Dante, the solemn, melancholy, depressed 
mood, which sees nothing in this beautiful world 
to rejoice in, that treats the gift of life and its 
mercies as a matter of course, is a deadly sin 
against the love of God. 

ISow, over against this, Paul tells us that the 
Christian ought always to rejoice, and it was up 
into this realm of joy, which no prison or per- 
secution was able to throttle even for a single 
day, that Paul came himself through association 
and fellowship with Jesus Christ. I doubt if 
there is any other call that we need to hear more 
clearly than this, for our usefulness in the world — 
the call to courage and joy through faith and 
reliance upon God. 

II 

Our theme ought to mean to us a call to the 
highest achievement that is possible for men and 
women. One of our greatest perils, that which 
is forever crippling our character and rendering 
our conduct imperfect and commonplace, is the 
excuses we make for ourselves, which permit us 
complacently to drop down into an average life, 
and congratulate ourselves that we are not much 
worse than our neighbors. There is no inspiration 



60 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

in such a life. A life can be romantic and inspi- 
rational only when it is reaching up to the best 
that is possible. The illustrations for this thought 
are on every side. 

I was reading recently an old Chinese proverb 
to the effect that, if one have a journey of twenty 
miles to make, he should count nineteen of those 
miles the first half, and the final mile he should 
count the second half of the journey. In an 
undertaking or an excursion into noble living this 
old Chinese proverb holds true. It is the last 
mile, the last measure of achievement, that counts 
for more than all that has gone before. Some 
one has well said that every individual life, how- 
ever prosaic, is a great adventure, is a pushing 
forward into the great unknown, and the last 
measure of achievement counts for more than all 
that precedes. If we live the true life, we realize 
that Browning is right when he says that it is 
"the last of life, for which the first was made." 
If we do not feel that the last year of our lives 
counts for more than the years that preceded it, 
a certain consciousness of defeat inevitably takes 
possession of us. 

The thing I want to leave in our minds and 
hearts is this, that it is the extra of which we are 
capable, that which is above what is expected of 
us, the overflow water of life, above the ordinary 
gauge of the river — it is that that we must strug- 



THE TRAVELER'S HOPE 



61 



gle for and achieve. Many horses can approach to 
within nineteen twentieths of the speed of those 
who make the record ; but unless they can do more 
than this they will never be permitted to enter the 
race track, and, so far as speed is concerned, are 
counted failures. You may construct a build- 
ing, and it may be ever so fine; but if it be left 
nineteen twentieths complete, tenants will turn 
from it as unfit for consideration. A man may 
have nineteen twentieths of the necessary qualifi- 
cation for a great merchant, a great railroad 
manager, or a great banker, but unless he can go 
farther than this he will not succeed, for it is in 
that final five per cent that success lies. 

Almost anyone of an artistic temperament, if 
he be industrious and improve what talent he has, 
may paint pictures that will be very respectable, 
and so far as color and design are concerned, will 
seem to approach very closely to the masterpieces ; 
but if he cannot go farther than this, if he cannot 
compass that final, nameless something which 
gives it the atmosphere of genius, he will never be 
a great artist. A teacher may gain the esteem and 
good will of nineteen of her pupils, but the twen- 
tieth may cause her utter failure. A man may 
have poise and self-control nineteen twentieths of 
the time, but the lack of those virtues the other 
twentieth of the time may cause the breaking up 
of the family, the destruction of business, and 



62 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

seal the absolute failure of a career. A man may 
resist temptation nineteen twentieths of the time 
and still become a criminal. One may be perfectly 
sane and well balanced regarding nineteen twen- 
tieths of the subjects of life, and it still be neces- 
sary to confine him for the safety of the public, 
so near is the line between sanity and insanity. 
What I am trying to put deep into our conscious- 
ness is this, that it is infinitely important that we 
hold ourselves under bond to aspire to the very 
top, the very summit of goodness and truth in 
character and in conduct. 

It is strange that we should so shrink from the 
struggle for the best, strange that we should be 
so blind as not to see that it is the life that strug- 
gles which is interesting and full of the music 
and joy of achievement. Have you ever wandered 
in the woods in the summer time in mountainous 
places and listened to the rippling melody of the 
brook that came tossing down over the bowlders, 
splashing in waterfalls and rippling away in 
song where it was torn by the rocks? And did 
you never consider why it is that the brook sings 
its happy song under such circumstances ? Ah, 
it is the bowlders that make the brook sing. It is 
the difficulties in the way; it is the obstacles 
which it is compelled to overcome. It is the rough 
and ragged rocks that tear it into foam that evoke 
its heavenly music. 



THE TRAVELER'S HOPE 



63 



And so, my friends, we must learn that it is not 
ease, nor luxury, nor placid life without struggle 
that awakens melody and interest and enthusiasm 
in life. It is friction, struggle, climbing upward, 
getting ever new views of life under difficulties 
overcome. It is there that we catch a song in our 
hearts, and come to know something of the joy 
of Him who went toward the cross on Calvary 
because of the joy that was set before him. 

Ill 

Our theme this morning ought to give us 
courage to aspire to live the gospel of Christ so 
that men who see us shall think of the Christ 
who has inspired us. See the poor, unstable 
Peter, so full of faults ; but in association with 
Christ, and through his inspiration, Peter came 
to be a man whose very shadow as he passed by 
was full of healing and blessing. Principal 
Fairbairn says that when Samuel, the man who 
anointed David king, used to pass through the 
streets of the towns that knew him, the people 
fell silent, and after he had passed, they whis- 
pered one to another, "There goes a man who 
has seen God, who is as gracious, and kindly, and 
generous as the God he has seen." 

An Englishman at Ningpo, China, asked a 
Chinaman, worshiping in his mission room, if he 
had ever heard the gospel before. "I have not 



64 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

heard it," he said, "but I have seen it." He then 
told how he had seen the transformation of one 
of the most wicked, blasphemous opium-eaters by 
the power of the gospel. And the world needs 
that we, each of us, shall be a new incarnation of 
God among men, so that the divine loveliness may 
be made apparent through us. 

In the National Gallery in London there is a 
very small painting by Diaz, who stole the sun- 
beam and went away with it, and put it into a 
prism, and painted what he calls "The Sunny 
Day in the Forest." It is a wonderful little pic- 
ture painted so in the atmosphere of the sunshine 
that it is sunshine. One critic who looked at it 
says it seemed to say to him, "He that hath seen 
me hath seen the sun." So Christ stood out be- 
fore the world and said, "He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father." And it is the most glori- 
ous hope that can ever inspire our hearts that we 
may be so radiant with the divine love that men, 
seeing us, will see something of the beauty of 
God. If they thus see it, they must see it in our 
attitude toward our fellow men. It must be be- 
cause, throwing aside all compromises, in the 
power of God, we undertake to live the perfect 
Golden Rule in relation to our fellows. Then 
Christianity will become understandable to men. 
y A friend of mine who is pastor of a church in 
Brooklyn, New York, dropped in by invitation 



THE TRAVELER'S HOPE 



65 



one Monday to lunch with one of his men who 
was the secretary of a big corporation that has 
its office in Broadway, New York. My friend 
had preached the night before on the text, "Inas- 
much as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me/"' and 
when they sat down to lunch the next day, the 
business man said to him: "Say, what you said 
last night about helping folks is true. I have 
tried it in business. And I have had a lot of fun 
out of it, too. For instance," he went on, "there 
is our stenographer. She supports her mother and 
two or three younger brothers and sisters. Well, 
this past winter the girl was laid off for a long 
time by sickness. After several weeks the ques- 
tion of continuing her salary came up in our 
directors' meeting. One man said: 'O, we might 
as well drop her from the pay roll. She will 
never be able to work again.' Then I got up and 
said : 'Men, that won't do. Our concern will never 
miss the salary that goes to that sick girl and 
her family. So I move that her salary be con- 
tinued indefinitely whether she comes back or 
not.' And my motion was carried. Well, the 
result is, the girl is back at work. More than 
that, with tears in her eyes, she told me the very 
moment she heard of the company's action she 
seemed to get better. O,' he added, 'there's a 
peck of fun in doing things like that.' " 



66 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

My friend, the preacher, remarked, "That's 
Christianity walking around on two feet." The 
business man laughed a little and continued: 
"Only recently our man Tom got very sick. Tom 
works down in the basement, handles freight and 
the like. Having no education, he makes only 
small pay. Tom lives with his old mother and 
is her only means of support. Well, it looked as 
if Tom's last call had come. But after lingering 
on for a long time he began to improve. Now, 
of course, it was a little thing to do, but every 
afternoon I sent one of the men over to find out 
how Tom was getting on. Then every Saturday 
I had his pay envelope sent to his mother. Well, 
as luck would have it, Tom got well, too, and is 
back at work. And, say," said the business man 
with a twinkle in his big tender eyes, "I don't 
want to boast, but Tom thinks I am about right. 
Tom's gratitude has brought me more satisfaction 
than a month's salary. But," said the business 
man to his preacher, as they got to the ice cream, 
"the finest bit of joy I have had at this sort of 
thing was last Christmas. At our home, over in 
Brooklyn, we have a washerwoman who comes in 
once a week to make things easier for the down- 
stairs maid. She was having a hard time round 
the holidays. Mike, her husband, was investing 
his own wages, and Bridget's, too, in the cup. My 
wife told me about it. 'Well,' thought I, 'I'll just 



THE TRAVELERS HOPE 



67 



play a Christmas trick on Bridget.' So I bought 
the biggest, fattest turkey I could find, had it 
roasted and sent to her. And the fun of it all is 
she don't know to this day who sent it." 

My friends, it is along this line that the Golden 
Rule must work itself out in the world's redemp- 
tion. It is not a thing of Christmas only, it must 
be every day in the year that we shall be climbing, 
in fellowship with Jesus Christ, up into unselfish- 
ness and love in all our social and business life. 

IV 

I must not close without calling attention to 
the comforting and inspiring hope which our 
theme offers to the sinning soul. You may be 
as great a sinner as Peter was, as unstable, as 
unreliable, as easily led away to deny your Lord ; 
but Jesus Christ looks into your heart and sees 
that if you will turn from your sin and follow 
him, "Thou shalt be" redeemed from your beset- 
ting sins and lifted into a new life of righteous- 
ness and peace. 

It must be that I speak to some who are very 
much dissatisfied with what they are. You are 
conscious that you have come far short of your 
privileges. You had such a good father, you had 
such a beautiful mother, the atmosphere of your 
childhood was so tender with prayer and so fra- 
grant with Christian faith, that you feel it to be 



68 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

a shame that at your age you should be so prayer- 
less and so far from the noble Christian that you 
ought to be. Brother, sister, Christ stands look- 
ing into your heart as he looked into that of An- 
drew's brother, and he is saying, " 'Thou art' 
more sinful even than you see, but if you will 
open the doors of your heart and let me come in 
and dwell there 'thou shalt be' a better man or a 
holier woman than you dream possible. Every- 
thing that is beautiful and noble in humanity 
shall be yours if you will but open your heart 
that I may come in and be master in your life." 



CHAPTEE V 



The Master's Vessel 

He shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet 
for the master's use, and prepared unto every good 
work— 2 Tim. 2. 21. 

Henry Weston Frost, an English poet, re- 
cently went through a manufactory where potters 
were at work, and was fascinated with the mar- 
velous way in which the potter at his wheel trans- 
formed the unattractive and useless clay into rare 
and beautiful shapes and forms, so that the clay 
which once was only good to be trodden under 
foot was sought after by the rich and powerful 
and admired by artistic and cultivated taste and 
welcomed to a place in the mansion or the palace. 
The poet was a Christian man, and as he looked 
at the potter and admired his marvelous skill, this 
wonderful figure which Paul uses in his letter to 
Timothy came to his mind ; and as he went away 
home it clung to his thought, and he could not 
give it up, and so he wrote a poem entitled "The 
Transformed Clay," which had its inspiration in 
the potter's wheel and in the text which we are 
studying to-day: 



70 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



I 

A potter sat at his wheel one day, , 

In a cellar both dark and cold. 
Around in piles lay the plastic clay 

All damp, and covered with mold; 
In shapeless heaps it lay on the sand. 
Waiting the touch of the master's hand, 

The potter's foot turned his wheel around 

Till faster and faster it flew, 
With a click and a creak, and a whirring sound, 

That filled all the cellar through. 
Then the potter laid hold on a mass of clay, 
Where it lay in the darkness, dull and gray. 

The potter's sight was both clear and keen, 
And his touch was skillful and true; 

And the clay which lay in his hands between, 
He fashioned, and fashioned anew. 

Till, there on the wheel, before his eyes, 

A shapely vessel began to rise. 

At last the whir of the wheel was still 
And the work of the potter was done. 

Then the vessel was placed on the outer sill, 
In the light of the summer sun; 

And there the dull clay of the cellar cold 

Stood, a beautiful vase, all bathed with gold. 

II 

One day there was sound in the narrow street, 

Of hoof and of chariot wheel. 
And the King drew near, the potters to greet, 

And to ask of his people's weal. 
For none, as he, was so kind and true, 
The length and breadth of the whole land through. 



THE MASTERS VESSEL 



71 



The greetings over, the King passed by, 
Then he turned toward the palace hill. 

But he suddenly stayed, for his watchful eye 
Had seen the vase on the sill, 

Where it stood in the sunlight, slender and fair, 

Exquisitely fashioned, a work most rare. 

The King called the potter and asked his price; 

He paid what was asked, and e'en more; 
Then he hid his treasure of rich device 

In his bosom, and thus he bore 
The vase to the palace — his coveted prize, 
The joy of his heart and delight of his eyes. 

And now if you seek for the cold, dull clay, 

You must pass the old cellar by, 
And go up the hill, by the King's highway, 

'Neath the light of the sunlit sky, 
Till you reach the palace, the King's fair home; 
Yea, there you will find it — beside the Throne! 

Our text is in the midst of a striking para- 
graph in which Paul is setting forth to Timothy 
the conditions on which one may live a useful 
life; the characteristics we must have in order 
that God may use us to the full measure. The 
entire paragraph reads : "The Lord knoweth them 
that are his: and, Let every one that nameth the 
name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness. 
Isow in a great house there are not only vessels of 
gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth ; 
and some unto honor, and some unto dishonor. 
If a man therefore purge himself from these, he 
shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, meet for 



72 THE GEiEAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

the master's use, prepared unto every good work. 
But flee youthful lusts, and follow after righteous- 
ness, faith, love, peace, with them that call on the 
Lord out of a pure heart." Our text is the center, 
the core, of this paragraph. A man "shall be a 
vessel unto honor, sanctified, meet for the master's 
use, prepared unto every good work," on condi- 
tions which are specified here. 

I 

We have in our theme, first, the thought of 
cleansing. It is the vessel that is purged, that is 
clean, that is fit for divine use. That it be clean 
is of more importance than anything else. There 
are many things for which a vessel cannot be used 
at all, no matter what metal it is made of, unless 
it is clean. If we were to go in haste to give a 
draught of refreshing water to a traveler or a 
caller, we would take from our shelf the first ves- 
sel that was clean. We would pass over the ele- 
gant and richly chased cups for a common earthen- 
ware mug, or a plain tin cup, or even a country 
gourd, if it were clean and the others were filthy. 
And Christ will gladly use us for his service, 
though we be but common ware, if only we are 
clean and ready for use. You go into the hospitals 
and you will find that the instruments which are 
used in operations are constantly kept in carbolic 
acid, that they may not carry the slightest conta- 



THE MASTER'S VESSEL 



73 



gion to an open wound ; and we need to remember 
that we cannot touch the open and festering 
wounds which sin has caused, without injury to 
ourselves and others, unless we are ever in the 
cleansing atmosphere of the Spirit of Christ. 

We need to put great emphasis on the neces- 
sity of taking into consideration what effect our 
books, and the things we read, as well as our com- 
panions and friendships, and the themes upon 
which we muse and meditate, will have upon the 
cleanliness of our souls. There can be no greater 
folly than for us, through corrupt associations, or 
impure literature, or a salacious play, or a cynical 
or evil-minded companion, to give our souls a bath 
in dirty water that will make us unfit for use in 
the Master's service. It is not necessary that a 
thing be outrageously bad or scandalously evil in 
order to take off the freshness and beauty of our 
reverence, our trustfulness, and our keen enjoy- 
ment of that which is pure and good. If we find 
that anything we do is leaving the soul less pure 
and less satisfied with genuine Christian things 
and Christian service, that should be enough to 
cause us to condemn it and to know that for us 
it is unsafe. 

An Irishman was a laborer on a farm, and the 
farmer said to him one day, "That was a good 
"sermon, was it not, that we heard last Sunday?" 

The Irishman replied: "True for you, your 



74 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

honor, an illigant one! It done me a power of 
good intirely. Indade it did." 

"I am glad of that. Can you tell me what in- 
terested you most ? What was it about ?" 

"O, well,"' scratching his head, "I don't rightly 
— not just exactly know. I — a- — -I — a — where's 
the use in telling? Sure I don't remember one 
single 'dividual word of it, good or bad. Sorra 
a bit of me knows." 

"And yet you say that it did you a power of 
good ?" 

"So it did, sir. I'll stick to that, your honor." 
"I don't see how." 

"Well, now, your honor, look here. There is 
my shirt. After the wife's washing, clean and 
white it is, by reason of all the water and the soap 
and the starch that's gone through it. D' ye see ? 
But not a drop of 'em all — water, or soap, or 
starch, or blueing — has stayed in, d'ye see ? And 
that's just the same wid me and that sermon. It's 
run through me, your honor, and it's dried out 
of me; but all the same, just like me Sunday 
shirt, I am the cleaner and better after it." 

There was sound philosophy in the Irishman's 
reasoning, and you may be sure that impressions 
for good or evil may be indelibly stamped upon 
the mind and bear fruit long after the cause which 
produced them has passed away, or is forgotten. 

Let us search our hearts most earnestly to see 



the master's vessel 75 

if there be any wicked way in us, or if there be 
any sin clinging to us that makes us unfit for the 
Master's use; and if there be in us a conscious- 
ness that God cannot use us because of our fault, 
let us pray God that we may be purged and 
cleansed so that we shall be fit for his use. 

II 

We must be careful of our confidence and hold 
fast to our trust in God if we are to be fit for the 
Master's service. Just prior to this paragraph, 
Paul advises Timothy to be careful about his 
associations, that he does not associate with 
skeptical and cynical people, such as Hymenseus 
and Philetus, whose word, to use the graphic 
phrase of Paul, "will eat as doth a gangrene." 
And how true that is ! Who of us have not seen 
a man ruined as a helpful, useful, Christian 
worker through the association with some one 
whose light babbling or cold-blooded cynicism has 
taken the keen .edge off his faith in God, the 
sweetness out of his jorayer, and the restfulness 
out of his reliance upon the Bible ? O, the deadly 
gangrene that may be started in a man's heart 
through such associations ! If we are to be ves- 
sels of honor, whom Christ can use in every good 
work, we must keep our minds and hearts reverent 
in the Bible atmosphere ; fragrant with the praise 
of Christian hymns, tender and sympathetic 



76 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

through secret prayer and Christian service. 
Such a constant atmosphere will keep the soul 
not only clean, but confident and courageous, so 
that it will fear nothing but God; and your fear 
of him will be born of love for him. 
1 In the year 1745 Cornwall was like a pande- 
monium in bitter opposition to the evangelistic 
preaching of John Wesley. In the town of Fal- 
mouth a howling mob filled the streets, trying to 
find Wesley, determined to kill him. He, in a 
house in the town, was deserted by all his friends 
except a young girl — a servant girl, I imagine — - 
whom he calls "poor Kitty," and they heard the 
mob in the street ; and they heard them, with 
fierce yells, break into the house and into the 
adjoining room. There was only a thin partition 
of wood between the mob and the room in which 
Wesley and the girl were, and they were batter- 
ing at that partition. Wesley quietly took down 
from the partition a mirror, lest it should be 
broken, and then the poor, trembling girl said, "0 
sir, what must we do ?" Wesley said, "We must 
pray." Their lives did not seem to be worth an 
hour's purchase. "Is it not better to hide ?" said 
the poor girl. "Would it not be better for you to 
get here into the closet ?" "No," said Wesley, "it 
is best for me to stand just where I am." ISTow, 
you will remember that John Wesley, although 
he was one of the greatest heroes that ever lived, 



THE MASTER'S VESSEL 



77 



in his spirit, was a very little man physically, one 
of the shortest and feeblest of men, and he counted 
it better, after praying, to stand just where he 
was. The mob was soon joined by a number of 
sailors who came up from the harbor, and were 
ready to join in the chase, and mad with the rest 
of the mob for making so long a business of it. 
Wesley heard them rush into the neighboring 
room, and with a cry, "Avast, lads, avast," thrust 
themselves against the whole partition and the 
whole partition wall fell down, and the howling 
mob was in the room before him. Then John 
Wesley said, quietly, to them : "Here I am. Which 
of you has anything to say against me ?" And so 
appalled were they by the quiet courage of the 
little man, that without knowing what they 
did, they made way, and Wesley quietly walked 
through them all into the street, and there in the 
street, with the mob howling around him, he be- 
gan quietly to preach, and as he preached, the 
crowd was anxious to hear ; and presently the very 
leaders of the mob — the captains of it, as he 
called them — gathered around him and shouted 
out, "Not a man shall touch him ; let him speak." 
And there he delivered his message, and quietly 
passed through them to the harbor, where he took 
his boat, and that night he wrote in his journal: 
"I never saw before the hand of God so plainly 
shown as here." 



78 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

What was the secret of it all ? J ohn Wesley 
believed God, pillowed his head upon his prom- 
ises, feared him; but he feared nothing else in 
the world. God can always use a man who keeps 
his faith and confidence fresh and reverent and 
loving through constant communion with the 
Bible and prayer and holy living. 

Ill 

If we are to have the kind of personality that 
Christ can always use in every good work, we 
must keep our souls musical with things beau- 
tiful and good. There must be no strife nor dis- 
cord in our natures. Selfishness, with its envy 
and hate and anger and evil temper, must be 
banished, and, as Paul tells Timothy, we must 
"follow after righteousness, faith, love, peace, 
with them that call on the Lord out of a pure 
heart." How often we see, in the common life 
of every day, a man or a woman, or a boy or a 
girl, taken up and used successfully in some im- 
portant place not because they have greater gifts 
than others who are rejected, but because there 
is about them a certain rhythm, a certain harmony 
of soul, that makes it possible for them to be used 
without discord, where one with greater gifts and 
much larger ability is impossible because lacking 
in that harmonious nature. So Christ can use us 
only when there is in our souls the longing to 



THE MASTERS VESSEL 



79 



make music for him, longing to give our service, 
not from any selfish purpose, but because of our 
great love for him. A loving service is the only 
service Christ can use. He can supplement our 
power, he can supplement our lack of ability, if 
we are only clean and trustful and loving, ready 
to do our best. Christ is able to supplement all 
other lacks and make us useful beyond our fondest 
dreams. 

Dr. F. B. Meyer tells the story of a party of 
tourists who were making holiday in Norway. 
They were staying at a beautiful hotel in a most 
picturesque region, where there stretched on every 
side magnificent views of mountains and land- 
locked seas. But the drawing-room of that hotel 
became to many people almost unbearable. Every 
morning a little girl, who had just begun to learn 
the difficult science of music, seated herself at the 
grand piano and commenced to strum the five- 
finger exercises and those simple little melodies 
with which every novice must begin ; and all day 
long, with but little respite, the enthusiastic little 
soul went through the oft-repeated part with the 
same mistakes recurring with dreadful monotony 
until that drawing-room became a desert in which 
she played alone. But one day the strumming 
ceased and the house was flooded with divinest 
music. The visitors flocked from tennis court 
and garden, from private sitting room and bed- 



80 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

room, from every nook and corner where they had 
sought a refuge from that ardent child, and as 
they trooped into the drawing-room, a strange 
scene met their sight. One of the leading pianists 
of Europe was seated by the little maiden's side, 
and as she strummed with her two fingers, with 
delicate touch and infinite expression, the great 
musician lifted her childish theme into his own 
magnificent improvisation, turning her discords 
into gracious harmonies, until the whole house- 
hold stood entranced. When the impromptu con- 
cert ceased and the uninvited audience began to 
express their thanks, with the humility of true 
dignity the pianist made reply, "It is this little 
lady whom you must thank for any pleasure you 
have derived." 

And, my dear friends, that is what the Lord 
Jesus Christ is able to do, and willing to do, and 
longing to do with every one of us. If we will 
only try to play our part, though it is but a little 
part, earnestly and lovingly, we shall not be with- 
out his skill and his infinite help. Without him 
we stumble and fail to strike the true note of rap- 
ture, and though we do our best, there will often 
be unhappy discords. But if we, through our 
complete surrender to do his will, yield ourselves 
wholly and lovingly to his service, he will come 
and take his place by our side, and with his skill- 
ful touch on the keys of life, our frailties will be 



THE MASTERS VESSEL 



81 



caught up and blended with his strong chords of 
rich and tender music, and life will be made one 
grand, sweet song. 

IV 

One thing more I think our theme should 
teach us. If Christ is to use us to the best ad- 
vantage, then he must have all there is of us. We 
must give ourselves entirely to his service. 

Bishop Hendrix, in his "Literature of the 
Saints," says that revealed religion shows the 
delight which God has in a man who gives the 
whole of himself that he may know and do the 
will of God. Only when we give our all to God 
can we know him, and can he make use of us. 
Whatever of selfish motives control us, by so much 
are the intellectual faculties dulled and the spir- 
itual perceptions dimmed. We increase our power 
and enlarge our influence only as we forget our- 
selves. Horace used to say that no avaricious man 
could be a poet, and Milton declared that "He 
who would write a great poem must make his 
life a great poem." God makes the largest use 
of those whose powers are wholly his in fellow- 
ship and service. It is the man who is fit to re- 
ceive God's message who becomes at once God's 
messenger. The prophet was Israel at its high- 
est, a peculiar, a holy people, in whom all the 
nations of the earth shall be blessed. His per- 



82 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

sonal exaltation in rapt communion with God was 
more than the content of his message. There were 
deep religious experiences that no language could 
tell, and it was unlawful to attempt it. The in- 
spired man was more than the inspired message. 
God spake through him only so far as God spake 
in him. It is the holy lips of Isaiah, cleansed by 
fire, and surrendered entirely to God's service, 
which have won a hearing for his inspired, be- 
cause holy, words. Heaven seems possible — in- 
deed, seems certain — when once you have looked 
on the face of Jesus Christ and listened to the 
prophets and the apostles and come to feel and 
know the divine Presence in your own heart. 
Heaven becomes a necessity because of the 
heavenly atmosphere of the soul. 

A few months before he went away to heaven 
Phillips Brooks, one of God's noblest prophets, 
coming home from Europe, had a glimpse of the 
city of God that is builded of true and noble souls, 
and wrote a little poem entitled "The Waiting 
City." How his own soul must have exulted as, 
looking out across the waste of waters, he saw the 
city "which hath foundations, whose builder and 
maker is God," and, seeing, sang: 

A city throned upon the height behold, 
Wherein no foot of man as yet has trod; 
The city of man's life fulfilled in God. 

Bathed all in light, with open gates of gold. 



THE MASTERS VESSEL 



83 



Perfect the city is in tower and street; 
And there a palace for each mortal waits, 
Complete and perfect, at whose outer gates 

An angel stands its occupant to greet. 

Still shine, O patient city on the height, 
The while our race in hut and hovel dwells. 
It hears the music of thy heavenly bells 

And its dull soul is haunted by thy light. 

Lo, once the Son of man hath heard thy call 

And the dear Christ hath claimed thee for us all. 



CHAPTER VI 



The Strength Won from the Desert 

Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; 

In whose heart are the highways to Zion. 

Passing through the valley of Weeping they make it 

a place of springs; 
Yea, the early rain covereth it with blessings. 
They go from strength to strength; 
Every one of them appeareth before God in Zion. — 

Psa. 84. 5-7 (Am. Rev. Ver:). 

The desert places of the earth have fascinated 
the people of our age more than those of any other 
epoch in history. Not only the ice-barrens of the 
Arctic Circle, or the still more bleak and desolate 
wastes of the frozen South, but the great desert 
spaces of all continents have their explorers, that 
vie with each other in courage and daring and 
death if they may search out the mystery and the 
silence of the desert. We have many books, these 
days, like "The Eeturn of the Native," and "The 
Garden of Allah," the chief fascination of which 
is that they tell us of the strange joys and powers 
and presences and colors in those silent regions 
that not long ago were counted to be only bleak 
and desolate waste places. With eloquence and 
with vivid portraiture these authors show the pic- 
turesqueness of the desert, especially the great 

84 



THE STRENGTH WON FROM THE DESERT 85 

deserts of the East, and the majesty that lies in 
the great flat places stretching out as eternity 
stretches from the edge of time, full of mystery, 
of power, and of all deep and significant things. 

There is a spiritual significance in all this. 

In one of these modern books of the desert 
there is given a bit of dialogue between a man 
and a woman: 

" 'The desert is full of truth. Is that what 
you mean to ask V the man says. 

"The woman made no reply. 

"The man stretched out his hand to the shin- 
ing expanse of desert before them. 

" 'The man who is afraid of prayer is unwise 
to set foot beyond the palm trees,' he said. 

" 'Why unwise V she asks. 

"He answers, 'The Arabs have a saying, "The 
desert is a garden of Allah." ? " 

I 

Here, then, is our theme. The desert is the 
garden of God. That which David calls the 
"Valley of Weeping" has its legitimate place in 
the geography of every human career. The desert 
has its counterpart in the life of the soul of man. 
None of us can hope to escape it. There come 
to everyone who lives long on the earth those 
silent and desert places which Newman in his 
great hymn calls the "moor and fen," across which 



86 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

he trusts God will guide him, as well as over the 
"crag and torrent." The desert is likely to ap- 
pear at any time in our lives, and change and 
transform them into something very different 
from that which our ambition plans. Indeed, our 
ambition may unwittingly lead straight to the 
desert. You remember the ambition of the mother 
who came to Christ with her two sons, who say 
unto him, "Grant unto us that we may sit, one 
on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, 
in thy glory." How little did they dream that 
if their prayer had been answered, on that black 
Friday on Golgotha, which we have come to call 
"Good Eriday," they would have taken the place 
of those two thieves who were crucified, the one 
on his right hand and the other on his left. Some 
one sings of this : 

I dreamed of an heritage of ease; 

And my poor heart was fain 
That bliss to know, that prize to seize, 

That golden crown to gain. 

I set me to win it, and eagerly 
I planned and toiled and strove; 

And I asked the Lord to grant it me 
Of his exceeding love. 

Was he cruel to say me nay? Behold, 

He said it in love for me. 
For what I took for a throne of gold 

Was a cross of misery. 



THE STRENGTH WON FROM THE DESERT 87 



II 

The desert is a great brooding place of souls. 
Souls that would shrivel and become narrow and 
dwarfed with abundant fertility and prosperity 
are oftentimes enlarged and enriched by the 
brooding and meditation that comes in the desert 
places of trial and weakness and uncertainty. 
Many of us have known what Dr. Robertson 
HSTicoll describes when he says that in the busiest 
and most crowded life men may come to a day 
where the desert suddenly rolls up to their door. 
The soul is at once by great bereavement put upon 
a life-and-death battle with vacancy and dreari- 
ness, when the last echo of human joy seems to 
faint upon the air, when the sounds of the world 
are a harsh intrusion upon desolation, when life 
seems hardly any longer valid, and there is noth- 
ing for it but to say, "No one but God knows what 
is in my heart." Verily the "moor and fen" have 
come to us; it is the wilderness from which we 
may never emerge. It is the experience from 
which many never recover to take true hold of 
life any more; it is the veritable grayness of the 
desert that has passed into the soul. And yet, if 
we are wise enough and humble enough to bow 
down before God and open the mind and heart to 
him in the desert places, the desert may be the 
great brooding place of our lives and infinitely 
enrich us and enlarge our possibilities. 



88 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



Many of you will remember from your child- 
hood the story of "Sindbad, the Sailor." When 
Sindbad went to Serendib he found that nothing 
could exceed the riches and the grandeur of the 
king. Nothing could excite greater admiration 
than the magnificence of his palace. When this 
prince wished to appear in public a throne was 
prepared for him on the back of an elephant ; on 
this he sat and proceeded between two files com- 
posed of his ministers, favorites, and others be- 
longing to the court. Before him, on the same 
elephant, sat an officer with a golden lance in his 
hand, and behind the throne another stood with 
a pillar of gold on the top of which was placed 
an emerald about six inches long and an inch 
thick. He was preceded by a guard of a thou- 
sand men, habited in silk and gold stuffs, and 
all mounted on elephants which were richly 
caparisoned. 

When the king was on his march, the officer 
who sat before him on the elephant from time 
to time cried with a loud voice, "This is the great 
monarch, the powerful and magnanimous Sultan 
of the Indies, whose palace is covered with a hun- 
dred thousand rubies, and who possesses twenty 
thousand diamond crowns." 

After pronouncing these words the officer who 
stood behind the throne cried in his turn, "This 
monarch, who is so great and powerful, must die, 



THE STRENGTH WON FROM THE DESERT 89 

must die, must die." The first officer then re- 
plied, "Hail to him who lives and dies not." 

The purpose of this constant refrain was to 
save the monarch from reckless pride. And it is 
the deserts of life, with their constant calls to hu- 
mility, with their constant refrain speaking to 
us of our weakness, of our frailty, of our lack of 
permanency and power, that are to wise and ear- 
nest souls a new garden of God in which the soul 
may sprout anew those eternal growths which 
alone make for true greatness in our lives. 

If I speak to any at this time who are in the 
midst of the desert, and who have been tempted 
to give up the struggle of life because of the de- 
pressing influence of these hard experiences which 
have surrounded you, I wish to be God's mes- 
senger to you this morning, to awaken you to 
realize the fact that this very desert which seems 
to you to be the graveyard of all of your hopes, 
and the burial ground of all the fond longings of 
your soul, may be, if you will, the very garden of 
God to you. It may be to you what the prison 
was to John Bunyan and what the wilderness and 
mountain cave were to David. It may be the place 
where you shall rise out of weakness into strength, 
and achieve blessings not only for yourself but 
cause springs of joy and of life to flow forth to 
others. Some poet writes with graphic clearness 
in illustration of this great truth: 



90 



THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



Tired! well, what of that? 
Didst fancy life was spent on beds of ease, 
Fluttering the rose leaves scatter'd by the breeze? 
Come! rouse thee, work while it is called to-day! 
Coward, arise — go forth upon the way! 

Lonely! And what of that? 
Some must be lonely; 'tis not given to all 
To feel a heart responsive rise and fall — 
To blend another life into its own; 
Work may be done in loneliness; work on! 

Dark! Well, and what of that? 
Didst fondly dream the sun would never set? 
Dost fear to lose thy way? Take courage yet; 
Learn thou to walk by faith and not by sight; 
Thy steps will guided be, and guided right. 

Hard! Well, and what of that? 
Didst fancy life one summer holiday 
With lessons none to learn and naught but play? 
Go, get thee to thy task; conquer or die! 
It must be learned — learn it then patiently. 

No help! Nay; 'tis not so, 
Though human help be far, thy God is nigh, 
Who feeds the ravens, hears his children cry. 
He's near thee wheresoe'er thy footsteps roam, 
And he will guide thee, light thee, help thee home. 

Ill 

In the desert we may come, if we will, into 
closer fellowship with God and with Christ than 
we can know anywhere else. Christ is not a 
stranger to the desert. When he went forth from 
his baptism to his great ministry , he first spent 
forty days in the wilderness with the wild beasts, 



THE STRENGTH WON FROM THE DESERT 91 

and it was in the desert places of trial and temp- 
tation that he found his preparation for that 
wonderful ministry in which he so marvelously 
revealed the heart of God to men. Let no one 
who suffers in desert experiences doubt for a mo- 
ment that Christ follows close and is ready at the 
slightest desire on your part to enter into most 
loving and comforting fellowship. 

A minister who devotes much time to work 
among the very poor tells how one night in a 
great city he walked through the storm, and as 
he walked rapidly he came up behind a poor 
woman who was very thinly clad and by her side 
was a little girl. Suddenly the woman stopped, 
shuffled round her shoulders toward the child a 
thin and tattered black shawl, and wrapped it 
round the little girl. As she did so she said, 
"Come closer to me, Nellie." The good man 
watched all this, and followed as they went on. 
He heard the mother say, "Does the rain come 
on you now, Nellie?" 

"No, mother," said the little voice. 

"Well, come closer to me, Nellie." 

Soon they entered a railway bridge where they 
were for a moment free from the storm. As they 
did so the minister stepped up into the light and 
said, "You seem in trouble ?" 

The woman turned, startled and afraid, but 
on looking into his face, recognized him, and 



92 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

said, with a sigh of relief, "0, is that you, 
Mr. ?" 

"Yes. What is the matter ?" 

"0, my poor husband has been ill for a month, 
and we have nothing left. We have neither fire 
nor food, and I have just been to the pawnshop 
to see if I could get anything on this" — and she 
produced a small parcel — "but the door is shut. 
I am broken-hearted." 

The minister went home with them, and there 
was soon fire in the grate, and food on the table, 
and tears of gratitude, and gleams of return- 
ing hope. But as he went home that night the 
minister said the words ringing in his ears and 
reechoing down deep in his heart were: "Come 
closer to me, Nellie. Does the rain come on you 
now, Nellie?" "No, mother." "Well, come 
closer to me, Nellie." And as he said these words 
over and over he heard another Voice saying, 
"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke 
upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is 
light, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." 
travelers in the desert, you may find J esus there, 
and, finding him, know that the desert shall be- 
come the rose garden of God unto your souls. 
You may go from strength to strength even in 
your "Valley of Weeping." 

Dr. Watkinson said recently that many a young 



THE STRENGTH WON FROM THE DESERT 93 

man or young woman was saying, "I cannot serve 
God in this situation." People say: "It is im- 
possible to keep religion in a shop like ours. There 
is an entire absence of religion in the place. You 
might as well expect to keep your health amid 
fever swamps as to live a hightoned life in an 
establishment like ours." But if in that Sahara- 
like desert where you work you will enter into 
fellowship with Christ, and day by day walk with 
his yoke about your neck, God will strengthen you 
as he is strengthening thousands of young men 
and young women to live brave, pure lives in most 
forbidding circumstances ; and they bring the 
luster, the bloom, the fragrance of the skies into 
the desert places where they are. Be of good 
courage. God shall bless you there. You shall 
tread on the lion and adder ; the young lion and 
the dragon you shall trample under foot. And 
if we thus enter into fellowship with God in our 
desert experiences, we shall come out of the desert 
and the wilderness not weakened and defeated, 
but, like Christ, who came away from his desert 
of trial and temptation in the power of the Spirit 
and ministered to by angels, we shall get from 
the hard, trying experiences of life greater power 
and nobler joy than we have ever known. 

God always has an "afterward" 

For every bitter thing. 
The flowers may fall, but fruit abides; 

The butterfly's bright wing 



THE GEE AT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

Is painted in its long night's sleep; 

Each winter hath its spring. 
How glorious is the afterward 

When Easter joy-bells ring! 

God always has an "afterward": 

The patriarch Job, of old, 
When in the fires was yet assured 

He should come forth as gold; 
And Joseph found it thus, when he 

Was by his brethren sold — 
A wealth of blessing God designed, 

Unfathomed and untold. 

God always has an "afterward" — 

An afterward of bliss; 
First night, then morning, formed the day, 

So must it end like this! 
His purpose, higher than our thought, 

We should be sad to miss; 
Though hidden, folded in his hand, 

Faith still that hand would kiss. 

God has a shining "afterward" 

For every cloud of rain; 
We may not see the meaning now 

Of sorrow and of pain, 
But nothing God permits his child 

Can ever be in vain; 
The seed here watered by our tears, 

Yields sheaves of ripened grain. 

God always has an "afterward"; 

He keeps the best in store, 
And we shall see it hath been so 

When we reach yonder shore: 
The cross, the shame, he once despised, 

For the joy set before, 
And as we follow we shall find 

Death is Life's opening door! 



CHAPTEK VII 



The New Song 
Sing unto the Lord a new song. — Psa. 96. 1. 

A song to a man like David was the one fit 
expression of thanksgiving for and appreciation 
of the mercies of God. This expression which 
we have taken for our text is often used in the 
Psalms, because David never believed in making 
one song serve for two victories. Every great 
achievement, every great conquest, every escape 
from an enemy, meant a new song of thanks to 
the God in whose help he had trusted. David 
was always facing the future, and it is in that 
way that the new songs will come to us. 

Dr. Len G. Broughton, of Atlanta, Georgia, 
tells how in his youth he went up from his home 
in the South to Kew York. It was the first time 
he had ever been in a great city. A friend of his 
took him one day to show him the sights, and, 
among other things, he took him to a "Museum 
of Living Curiosities." In that museum the first- 
thing that caught his eye was a man with his 
head on backward. He looked as straight back 
of him as an ordinary man looks front. 

Broughton said to his friend, "Is that a sure- 
enough man, or is it one of those made-up men ?" 

95 



96 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

"Suppose you examine him," was the reply. 

He said it was a most curious thing to walk up 
to the front of a man, looking at the back of his 
head. When he got up to him, the strange man 
turned his back on him and smiled. 

"Are you a sure-enough man?" Broughton 
asked. 

"Why do you ask that question ?" said he. 

"Well, if you are," said Broughton, "I am sorry 
for you, because you never see anything until it 
has gone past you." 

Many people are like that; their heads are 
turned toward the past, and for such there are no 
new songs. Emerson said concerning the age in 
which he lived that it was just like that man — 
always looking backward; and, with some quali- 
fications, our own age is much like it. It is 
retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the 
fathers. It writes biographies, historic criticisms. 
The foregoing generations beheld God and nature 
face to face ; we, largely, through their eyes. Why 
should we not also enjoy an original relation 
to the universe ? Why should we not have a 
poetry and philosophy of insight instead of tra- 
dition, and a religion by revelation to us and 
not the history of theirs? With the floods of 
life streaming around and through us, and invit- 
ing us to action, why should we grope among the 
dry bones of the past, or put the living generation 



THE NEW SONG 



97 



of the day into masquerade out of its faded ward- 
robe ? The sun shines for us to-day as for them. 
There are more resources now than in the past. 
There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. 
Why shall we not have a living world, sensitive 
to the presence of the living God, and sing our 
own new songs to the God who is our God as much 
as he was David's ? 

I 

We should have suggested to us by our theme 
that the new song can be awakened only out of a 
living, vital experience. A song is life at con- 
cert pitch. A song is the essence of living, it is 
life extracted. When life is at its full, then both 
birds and men sing. Sick people, worn out 
people, discouraged people, dead people, do not 
sing. A song is life bursting into music. You 
cannot have a new song unless you live a new 
life. A song is a vital thing that springs out of 
a pulsing, sensitive, virile experience. A great 
literary critic wrote a while ago that he never 
understood the drive and leap and spring of Sir 
Walter Scott's "Marmion" until he declaimed it 
aloud on a galloping horse. But why did the 
secret of "Marmion" come out when it was de- 
claimed on the back of a galloping horse ? Be- 
cause it was composed on the back of a galloping 
horse. And if you will take up "Marmion" with 



98 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

this conception of the leap and spring and gallop 
in your mind and heart, you will get the very go 
and drive and rhythm of the poem. And if we 
are to have new songs to sing to God, we must be 
living our own lives, genuinely, earnestly, every 
day. 

I wish I knew how to make you feel, as I feel, 
that all these old hymns, those of redemption, for 
instance, are largely dead driftwood, and only 
formal pawns in our church service, unless there 
is something of the living, sacrificial, blood-letting 
fact of redemption being experienced in our own 
lives. He who knows by experience what it is 
to give himself for another, gets a new song of 
redemption that to him is as new as was the song 
of Miriam on the bank of the Red Sea, or the song 
of Moses and the Lamb to those who stand on the 
sea of glass. 

Let me tell you a simple little New England 
story about two farm boys. Their names were 
Tom and Joe. Tom was the younger. It was 
his place to bring in the cows for the milking 
every evening, and he had always been told, when 
he brought in the cows for the milking, to put 
up the bars, lest the younger cattle should get 
out and do damage. But he did not always like 
to do it. It was a lot of work. And one day 
the bars were left down, and the younger cattle 
came out of the field and did a lot of damage. 



THE NEW SONG 



99 



Now, the father had said very plainly that the 
next time the thing happened he would give Tom 
a whipping, and things were very gloomy about 
the house that evening, and the next morning at 
breakfast. After breakfast the father went down 
into the lower field to do some work, and the older 
boy, Joe, went down to find him. He said: 
"Father, do you remember in the reading this 
morning at family prayers it said, 'He was 
wounded for our transgressions' ?" 
"Yes." 

Joe continued: "Father, I don't want Tom 
whipped." 

And the father knitted his brows and said : "My 
boy, I must have discipline. Tom has done 
wrong, and I must keep my word and whip him." 

Then the boy said again: "Father, didn't you 
read, 'He was wounded for our transgressions, he 
was bruised for our iniquities; with his stripes 
we are healed' ?" 

"Why, yes, boy. What a memory you have!" 

"Well," he said, "father, I want to take Tom's 
whipping." 

And the father said, "No, my boy." Then he 
stopped, and looked shrewdly out of the corner of 
his eye, and said: "Did Tom send you to me?" 

"No," Joe said. 

The father thought for a few moments, and 
th^n remarked : "Go and bring Tom down." 



100 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

The elder boy found his brother up at the house, 
trying to study his lessons, with no very good suc- 
cess. He said: "Tom, father wants to see you 
in the field." 

"Well," returned Tom, "I guess I may as well 
have it out now as any other time." 

Joe said to him, "Just be good now, and answer 
father nicely, and don't show temper." 

Tom looked as if he thought it was very nice for 
Joe to talk that way. He did not have a whipping 
in store. They went down to the lower field, and 
found the father standing, leaning on the handle 
of his hayfork, absorbed in thought. 

By and by Joe said, "Father, here is Tom." 

The father looked up and said : "Tom, do you 
remember in the reading this morning it said, 
'He was wounded for our transgressions, he was 
bruised for our iniquities ; with his stripes we are 
healed' ?" 

"Yes," said Tom, in astonishment. 

"What does it mean ?" inquired the father. 

Tom rather flushed up as he replied, "I suppose 
it means that Christ suffered for us." 

"Well, Tom," the father said, "Joe offers to 
take your whipping." 

Tom swung around to Joe, threw his arms 
around his neck and cried : "No, Joe, I was wrong. 
I deserve the whipping. You must not." Then 
he turned to his father with a brave but a gentle, 



THE NEW SONG 



101 



tender face, all the sullenness gone out of it, and 
said, "Father, I am ready now." 

The father's eyes were glistening and, in a 
shaking voice, he answered: "Well, my boy, I 
think there will be nobody whipped just now. 
But remember this: if the bars are left down 
again, Joe's offer holds good. You may go now." 

But the bars were never left down again. And 
both boys went away singing a new song in their 
hearts. For the one on one side and the other 
on the other had lived that morning, really lived, 
the story of redemption. 

II 

I think our theme should teach us that it is 
life, effort, rather than achievement, that gives the 
new song. David's greatest songs came when he 
was struggling without victories. God gives the 
new songs to the men who live ; the men who fight 
their sins, the men who struggle for the best ; the 
men who toil upward and climb, even though they 
never reach the mountaintop. It is life makes 
the song, not achievement. 

They have in Holland a picture which they 
called "The Jewel of The Hague." It is the 
picture of the farmland. There, under a tree, are 
lying a cow, a ram, a mother sheep, and a lamb. 
But above them all stands the splendid propor- 
tions of the male offspring of that cow. Strong, 



102 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

powerfully formed, is he. From the looks of the 
animal, he must be about two years old. Instead 
of the mother protecting him, he stands as the pro- 
tector of the mother. It is one of the great pic- 
tures, and artists from all over the world sit 
before it in admiration. Yet Paul Potter, the un- 
known sign-painter, painted "The Jewel of The 
Hague" for a tavern sign. For years it swayed 
backward and forward, beckoning the traveler to 
come and find refreshment within. 

I know another story like that in a different 
type. The blind poet, Marston, once had a tragic 
experience. He sat down at his typewriter one 
day, in a frenzy of inspiration. As he wrote, he 
gloried to find that he was at the very top of his 
creative bent. He wrote on and on, fervidly, for 
hours. At last he finished, and was sitting spent 
with the long-sustained effort, but still in the glow 
of achievement, when a friend came in. Marston 
told him that he had just finished the finest thing 
he had ever done, his masterpiece, and asked the 
friend to gather up the sheets and read, and tell 
what he thought of it. The friend picked up sheet 
after sheet until he held them all in his hand, 
and at last he had to tell the poet that he saw no 
poem, nothing but blank sheets. The ribbon had 
been removed from Marston' s typewriter, and he 
had absolutely nothing to show for his inspiration 
and his toil. 



THE NEW SONG 



103 



I think both of these stories are illustrative. 
There are many Paul Potters. There are many 
men and women who have had beautiful and in- 
spiring earthly dreams ; but they have never been 
able to make those dreams materialize. There are 
many workers for good who have struggled hon- 
estly and with great enthusiasm, whose work has 
been much like Marston's on the typewriter with- 
out a ribbon. But neither Paul Potter's painting 
nor Marston's poem-writing failed of the highest 
purpose, as they wrought on their dreams, and 
painted and sang their visions. God gave them 
their new song, the noblest song of all, the song of 
expression, the song that comes from uttering one- 
self, the song of doing one's best — the noblest 
song man can give back to God. 

We make a mistake when we imagine that there 
are only songs for the victory that comes with 
gladness. The sweetest songs men ever sing come 
through sorrow. David's most glorious songs 
were born in the wilderness and in the cave, and 
I am sure there are among us those who can 
realize the truth of the poet when he sings : 

I came to the Valley of Sorrow, 
And dreary it looked to my view, 

But Jesus was walking beside me, 
And sweetly we journeyed it through. 

And now I looked back to that valley 
As the fairest that ever I trod, 

For I learned there the love of my Father, 
I leaned on the arm of my God. 



104 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

Yes, as I look back to the valley 

From the crest of its glory-crowned hill; 
I call it my Valley of Blessing, 

So peaceful it lieth — so still; 
And sweeter its calm to my spirit, 

Than the chorus of jubilant song; 
'Tis there that the mourners find comfort, 

'Tis there that the weak are made strong. 

O, fair is the Valley of Sorrow! 

God's tenderest angels are there; 
Its shadows are lighted by Patience, 

And sweet with the fragrance of Prayer; 
Tired hearts gather strength in the valley, 

And burdens once heavy grow light; 
Ah, sweet are the "songs of the sunshine/* 

But sweeter the "songs in the night." 

O beautiful Valley of Sorrow! 

So holy, so calm, and so blest! 
Thy ways are the fairest I travel 

This side of the Land of my Rest. 
And if some day the Father should ask me 

Which was best of the paths that I trod, 
How quickly my heart shall make answer: 

"The Valley of Sorrow, O God!" 

Ill 

The new song is born of hope and courage. I 
am satisfied that hope and courage are the sources 
out of which springs the vitality that triumphs 
over every difficulty and is always bursting into 
song. Some one says that the greatest thing of 
all to be coveted in a home is vitality. One vital 
being will quicken, quiet, and tame domesticity 
into tuneful enjoyment. There is no vitality 



THE STEW SONG 



105 



equal to the vitality of a child, the limbs always 
moving, the mind always quick, the spirits always 
high, the observation always keen. When the 
ringing laughter of a child falls upon a silent 
house, what a resurrection there is there ! Women, 
though weaker physically than men, have, I think, 
been granted, perhaps in order to balance, more 
vitality. Dr. Nicholl tells how, in a Swiss hotel, 
he once saw a young girl who, by the sheer force 
of her intense and kind life, radiated the whole 
place. She was fresh, young, vital, full of red 
blood, abounding in hope and courage, and, some- 
how, she soon came to draw everyone within her 
orbit. When she left the place the whole company 
turned out to bid her good-by, and though she had 
brought them all into relations with one another, 
the place, it was universally confessed, was no 
longer the same. 

These vital people pass through the severest 
trials, and they feel them, but they are not con- 
quered by them. Sidney Smith was one of the 
most vital creatures who ever lived. When the 
years were heavy upon him, he wrote, "With the 
exception of three mortal diseases, I am quite 
well." Madame de Stael gave dinners on her 
deathbed. There are shocks and passions 

That kill the bloom before its time, 
And blanch without the owner's crime 
The most resplendent hair. 



106 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

Even if these things come, even if all their 
bitterness is tasted, the truly courageous and hope- 
ful soul refuses to be subdued, will not live in the 
past, will not allow misfortune to conquer him, 
will not consent to be a mere wreck, but will con- 
tinue to take his part in life. The man or the 
woman who thus lives with face to the front, cour- 
ageous in the friendship with Jesus Christ, hope- 
ful because of reliance upon God, may have an 
abounding good cheer that will give new songs 
under the darkest skies. 

This abounding vitality which bursts into song 
is always possible to Christians, because our new 
song is not born of selfishness, but of the priv- 
ilege of self-forgetfulness in bringing blessing to 
another. I came across a most beautiful story the 
other day, illustrating this. A gentleman was 
walking through one of the London parks when he 
saw a father walking with his little girl, who was 
about five years of age. They went by the statue 
to Mr. Fawcett, the blind postmaster-general, who 
used to live in that park. Standing behind the 
statue is an angel, and in the angel's hands a 
laurel crown, just coming down on the head of 
Mr. Fawcett. The father and the little girl looked 
at it and the child said, "What is the angel doing, 
daddy, with that ring with a big hole in the 
middle?" 

"It is a crown being put on his head, dear." 



THE NEW SONG 



107 



"What are they putting a crown on his head for, 
daddy ?" 

"O, because he was a very good man." 
"Will they put a crown on your head, daddy ?" 
"No, no, I don't suppose they will ever do 
that." 

"Why not, daddy?" 

"Well, they only put crowns on very good 
people's heads." 

"What's the matter with you ?" cried the child. 
"You're good enough !" And then, with a sudden 
inspiration: "Never mind, daddy; 111 be your 
angel and put a crown on your head." 

Ah, if we were all as wise as that little child and 
ready to crown the good that we find in those 
about us, we would be the world's angels, and the 
divine love in which our lives would be lived 
would awaken the new songs, for it is love that 
wakes the light and the music of life. Somebody 
sings : 

The night hath a thousand eyes, 

And the day but one; 
Yet the light of the whole world dies 

With the setting sun. 

The mind hath a thousand eyes, 

And the heart but one; 
Yet the light of a whole life dies 

When love is done. 

I cannot close without a word of hope and 
appeal to the man or the woman who is conscious 



108 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

this morning that your own sins have smothered 
the songs out of your heart and life. In the very 
nature of things, nothing will kill the song so 
quickly as sin. Sin not only degrades us, it 
crushes our hope and courage for our own souls. 
The divine power of Christianity lies in this, that 
Christ not only has power to forgive sins, but he 
is able to give the soul that is forgiven such a 
sensitive consciousness of God's love that it springs 
up again into new hope and courage. Thus it 
is that a man's conversion becomes the source 
of a new impulse, and no man can tell what glori- 
ous things are possible to him until he has turned 
away from every sin and surrendered his nature 
to the quickening power of the Divine Saviour. 

There is living in this city to-day a man who, 
on the day when General Custer and his army of 
faithful soldiers went to their death, was the only 
man who escaped out of that valley of destruction. 
He was an orderly sergeant, and was sent by his 
commander to hurry up reinforcements. His 
horse was shot under him, and he escaped death 
only by seeming miracle, and through terrible 
hardships and sufferings. He did not reach the 
reinforcements in time, though it was his testi- 
mony alone that saved the brave officer from 
unjust condemnation. Well, that man drifted 
about afterward, and some five years ago was in 
this city, stranded. His wife and child were in 



THE NEW SONG 



109 



a distant State. He was without employment, 
without money, and had lost his self-control and 
his manly self-respect. He had become a poor, 
miserable drunkard. One night a man picked 
him up on the street, and, noting his despairing 
look, asked if he had a place to sleep for the night. 
He confessed he had not even the price of a 
lodging. This new friend took him to the "Help- 
ing Hand," and the minister who preached that 
night talked with him and arranged for him to 
stay. After he had gone to bed a sudden convic- 
tion came over him that he ought to thank God 
for this new offer of friendship and this new 
chance to be a man. He got right up out of bed, 
knelt down beside his cot, and gave himself to 
God. That was five years ago. It was only a 
little while before his wife and child came on; 
the drinking was gone, sin of every kind was cast 
aside, a new song was in his heart and on his lips, 
and to-day he is respected and honored by a multi- 
tude of people ; and, best of all, he is a useful man, 
whose life blesses everybody he touches. His 
whole life is a new song unto God. 

Perhaps there is some one who hears me now, 
who needs, above everything else, this new im- 
pulse, this new consecration to God through Jesus 
Christ, that will awaken the new song in your 
heart and life. 



CHAPTEK VIII 



Living by the Higher Vision 
We walk by faith, not by sight.— 2 Cor. 5. 7. 

It is not humanity alone which walks by the 
higher vision, for even the dumb creatures of the 
woods do not walk merely by sense and sight. 
The greatest scientists admit that the humblest 
insects and birds have strange powers which 
range far beyond their knowledge. They can- 
not tell who points the way to a homing pigeon. 
They cannot explain why the robin knows 
enough to go South in winter, and back again to 
the North in the springtime. They cannot tell 
what marshals the swallows for a trackless flight 
to winter in tropical sunshine. They call these 
wonderful faculties "instincts," but the word is 
only a mask for our ignorance, for science has 
never fathomed instinct. And we may be sure 
that the God who taught the wild goose the path 
through thousands of miles of sky to its Northern 
nesting place has not forgotten his human chil- 
dren. He calls us to a higher path than that 
which is revealed by sense and sight. William 
Cullen Bryant, in perhaps the greatest of his 

110 



LIVING BY THE HIGHER VISION 111 

poems, illustrates this thought. Addressing his 
poem "To a Waterfowl/ 7 he sings : 

There is a Power whose care 

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, 
The desert and illimitable air, 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fanned, 

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 

Though the dark night is near, 

And soon that toil shall end; 

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, 

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 

And shall not soon depart. 

He who, from zone to zone, 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone 

Will lead my steps aright. 

It is one of the great mysteries that man, who 
has learned to observe and to reason, who can 
guide his steps by what is surer than the instincts 
of birds and beasts, yet makes his own grandest 
advance when he reaches out beyond all that his 
previous knowledge has been able to verify and 
walks by the higher vision of faith instead of the 
lower vision of sight. Browning speaks of "greet- 
ing the unseen with a cheer." And in that sentence 



112 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

the poet is not speaking about death and the 
future life; he is speaking of the whole world 
invisible around us now, the realm from which 
our courage and inspiration and power may come, 
the region that faith claims as its own. The man 
of faith always greets the unseen with a cheer, 
because to him the unseen is tjhe secret of his brav- 
est hopes and sturdiest strength. Faith means 
venture and risk, as in the case of Abraham, who 
left his own country not knowing whither he went 
The nobleman whose child was sick went back 
home, after Jesus had said his child should live, 
without proof. Columbus, when he turned his 
ship's prow toward the sunset and crossed an un- 
known ocean, did not steer by sight or by experi- 
ence. He had collected every scrap of evidence 
and had concentrated his mind for years on the 
secret of those Atlantic waters. But his voyage 
was a splendid act of faith. He made an heroic 
venture, and his venture revealed the New World. 
Faith may have its foundation in experience and 
knowledge, but it launches out beyond them and 
adventures upon the assurance of something 
which is as yet unknown by experience. 

I 

There could be no greater blunder than to 
think of faith and the spiritual realities which are 
associated witih it as a mere matter of adornment 



LIVING BY THE HIGHER VISION 113 

to life, an annex, or luxury, fringing the realities 
of existence. What bread is to the body faith is 
to the character and to the soul. Things that are 
worth while in human life can no more live with- 
out faith in God and in the possibilities of good- 
ness than the human body can be sustained with- 
out wholesome food. During the panic three 
years ago, the Wall Street Journal, of New York 
city, printed a very remarkable editorial which 
was reprinted and discussed in every part of the 
world. The substance of that editorial was that 
the man who believes in a future life, who has 
faith in the eternal verities, is a citizen of two 
worlds. He moves in this, but his highest thought 
and inspiration are fixed on the future. To such a 
man, what takes place here and now is not unim- 
portant, but it is infinitely less important than 
what shall take place hereafter. He looks upon 
his life here as but a preparation for the life to 
come. He measures everything by the infinite. 
Wealth, luxury, power, distinction — he may not 
despise these, but he looks upon them as being but 
temporary, mere delights which are given as tests 
of his character. Faith in eternal life smoothes 
out every inequality and injustice of the present 
life under the great weight of the infinite. It 
makes the poor feel rich and gives to the unfortu- 
nate a sense of grave responsibility and trustee- 
ship. 



114 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



The writer of this remarkable article in a 
financial journal assures his readers that he has 
no concern in mere theological discussions. He 
takes no part for or against any creed, but is in- 
tensely interested in the economic and political 
effects of any change in the thoughts, the habits, 
and the lives of men. If there has been a marked 
decline in religious faith, he declares that that 
fact cannot help being a factor in the markets. 
It changes the standards and affects the value of 
things which are bought and sold. It concerns the 
immediate interest of those who never had such 
a faith almost as much as it does the lives of those 
who have had the faith and lost it. The question, 
therefore, is of practical, immediate, and tremen- 
dous importance to Wall Street quite as much as to 
any other part of the world. He further asks: 
"Has there been a decline in the faith in the 
future life? and, if so, to what extent is this re- 
sponsible for the special phenomena of our time 
— the eager pursuit of sudden wealth, the shame- 
less luxury and display, the gross and corrupt- 
ing extravagance, the misuse of swollen fortunes, 
the indifference to law, the growth of graft, the 
abuses of great corporate power, the social unrest, 
the spread of demagogy, the advances of socialism, 
the appeals to bitter class hatred ?" 

Now, this financial writer to whom I have re- 
ferred makes the square declaration that whatever 



LIVING BY THE HIGHER VISION 115 

may be a man's own personal beliefs, there is no 
one who would not prefer to do business with a 
person who really believes in a future life ; and 
that if there are fewer men of such faith in the 
world, it makes a big difference ; indeed, it alters 
the very basic conditions of civilization. 

It is not only in matters of character and 
integrity that faith in spiritual things makes for 
righteousness and safety. It is also true that this 
high and holy faith is necessary to the real enjoy- 
ment of life. I mean this physical, sensuous, every- 
day life which we live in this world. Dr. Watkin- 
son quotes the Oriental proverb which says, "The 
lotus-flowers are not the Mle." The lotus-flowers 
are very beautiful as they fringe the river, as 
they shine on its bosom, but they are not the river ; 
they are not the source of the bread men eat ; they 
satisfy no thirst ; they are charming, but they are 
not the Nile. So Dr. Watkinson says the natural 
or the physical must not be allowed to eclipse the 
spiritual in which it lives and holds together. 
Suns, moons, and stars are golden lotus-flowers of 
the river of God ; they derive their splendor from 
him, they are sustained by him, and we must not 
permit the water-flowers to divert our thought from 
the God whose glory streams through the creation 
making it all that it is. 

Wandering in the forests of the Amazon, the 
naturalist declares that when gazing up through 



116 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

the leafy canopy at the midnight heavens, it is 
easy to mistake the fireflies flitting among the 
foliage for the brightly shining stars; so we are 
often apt to mistake the glittering things of the 
moment for the solid glories of eternity. But we 
soon awake to the mockery. Unless God puts into 
natural blessings a heavenly virtue and sweetness, 
they are utterly vain and unavailing. It is not 
what the eye sees, but what faith perceives, what 
the soul grasps and revels in, that has the power 
to make men either great or happy. When Moses 
was singing his swan song of blessing upon Israel 
just before his departure, he exclaims in his bene- 
diction on the tribe of Joseph: 

Blessed of Jehovah be his land, 
For the precious things of heaven, for the dew, 
And for the deep that coucheth beneath, 
And for the precious things of the fruits of the sun, 
And for the precious things of the growth of the moons, 
And for the chief things of the ancient mountains, 
And for the precious things of the everlasting hills, 
And for the precious things of the earth and the fullness 
thereof, 

And the good will of him that dwelt in the bush. 
Let the blessing come upon the head of Joseph. 

All the wonderful blessings of the fields and the 
pastures, and the wealth of the forests and the 
mountains, would in Moses's thought have been 
nothing without the last — "the good will of him 
that dwelt in the bush" — the smile of God. So, 
my dear friends, life will be leaden and unmean- 



LIVING BY THE HIGHER VISION 117 

ing, a failure indeed, if there be nothing above 
the earthly and the physical in it. Above and be- 
yond what the eye can see, faith must send forth 
her ventures, and enter into fellowship divine, if 
your life shall be touched with the divine romance 
and be glorified by the Eternal Presence. 

II 

Men and women who walk by faith are buoyed 
up by a comfort which the worldling cannot know. 
Saint John suggests the substance of that com- 
fort when he says: "Beloved, now are we chil- 
dren of God, and it is not yet made manifest what 
we shall be. We know that if he shall be mani- 
fested, we shall be like him ; for we shall see him 
even as he is." Such a faith exalts the soul both 
as to its ancestry and its future goal. My friend, 
Dr. Shannon, of Brooklyn, tells how he took his 
little boy, only four years old, to the museum. At 
first they looked at the pictures, but the boy soon 
tired of that and said, "Papa, I want to see the 
animals, and the soldiers, and the guns." So he 
took him through one collection after another, 
until they came to the glass case containing a 
magnificent specimen of the orang-outang, when 
the father said, "JSTow, Frederick, I want to intro- 
duce you to your grandfather." And my friend 
said it was really pathetic to see the expression on 



118 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

his little face, the shifting playground of repul- 
sive frown and childish incredulity, as he gazed 
at the savage ape holding the huge club in his 
ferocious grasp. He found his tongue at last and 
said: "Why, papa, I can't believe that he is my 
grandfather. He does not look one bit like my 
grandpa. I just can't believe it." And my friend 
went away from the museum pondering on the 
conversation and wondering if anybody believed 
it without first coloring their imagination as Da 
Vinci prepared his imagination before painting the 
head of the Medusa. They tell us that, as a prep- 
aration for his ghastly task, the painter captured 
a brood of venomous, swelling toads, and after tak- 
ing them to his house and tormenting them into a 
rage, he watched them until his artistic imagina- 
tion was soaked in the hideous sight. Then Da 
Vinci, with his imagination dipped in the poison 
of those venomous toads, put the Medusa on can- 
vas. So there are people who soak their imagina- 
tion in apehood until they can trace an unbroken 
lineage back to the orang-outang; but it is an 
infinitely more profitable and comforting task to 
allow the intuitions of the soul to venture forth on 
the lines of Saint John's ancestral doctrine: "Be- 
loved, now are we children of God, and it is not 
yet made manifest what we shall be. We know 
that if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him ; 
for we shall see 'him even as he is." 



LIVING BY THE HIGHER VISION 119 

He who walks by faith bears the sorrows of life 
with patience because it is but a transitory con- 
dition, and he knows that the greater part of his 
career, the infinitely more important part, lies be- 
yond the realm of things, the domain of time and 
sense. 

Wilberforce, in his old age, lost his only surviv- 
ing daughter. Said he one day, "I have often 
heard that sailors on a voyage will drink 'Friends 
astern' till they are half-way across the ocean; 
and then it is 'Friends ahead.' With me it has 
been 'Friends ahead' this long time, for I have 
many more friends ahead than astern." Such a 
faith puts the world in its proper place. It is 
only a temporary condition. We can afford to 
bear up with a great many inconveniences in it, 
and keep sweet, if through faith in God we are 
looking for the eternal life of fellowship in heaven. 
How truly and how sweetly the poet sings of this 
very thought when he compares the experiences of 
life here to a wayside inn, which is but for a 
night, whether it be good or bad : 

Ah, little Inn of Sorrow, 

What of thy bitter bread? 
What of thy ghostly chambers, 

So I be sheltered? 
'Tis but for a night, the firelight 

That gasps on thy cold hearthstone; 
To-morrow my load and the open road 

And the far light leading on! 



120 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBL.E 



Ah, little Inn of Fortune, 

What of thy blazing cheer, 
Where glad through the pensive evening 

Thy bright doors beckon clear? 
Sweet sleep on thy balsam-pillows, 

Sweet wine that will thirst assuage, 
But send me forth o'er the morning earth 

Strong for my pilgrimage. 

Ah, distant End of the Journey, 

What if thou fly my feet? 
What if thou fade before me 

In splendor wan and sweet? 
Still the mystical city lureth — 

The quest is the good knight's part; 
And the pilgrim wends through the end of the ends 

Toward a shrine and a Grail in his heart. 



CHAPTEE IX 



Christ the Pioneer of Humanity 

And they were on the way going up to Jerusalem; 
and Jesus was going before them: and they were 
amazed; and they that followed were afraid. — Mark 
10. 32. 

Christ was going to the cross. The three 
years' ministry, which Lecky in his history of 
human morals says "have done more to regenerate 
and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of 
the philosophers and all the exhortations of the 
moralists/' were drawing to a close. Jesus knew 
he was going to his death, and yet he was the 
most eager of all the company. His little group of 
friends were disposed to lag because their hearts 
were full of dread, but Christ led the march. 
They were amazed that he was going forth with 
joy. His countenance was lit up with a joyous ex- 
pression, like that which glows on the face of one 
who, after long absence, is again drawing near to 
his father's house. He knows that sorrows such 
as have never yet filled the breast of man await 
him there ; by his alacrity he would teach his 
friends, and through them all that come after 
them, how noble a thing it is to suffer in a good 
cause. They would think of this afterward, and 

121 



122 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

take courage. He tells them plainly that he is 
going forth to be abused and insulted and to die, 
but he tells them also that after that is the resur- 
rection and the eternal life. 

Bishop Charles H. Brent, of the Philippine 
Islands, has just written a book entitled "Leader- 
ship." He begins with a statement of the mean- 
ing of leadership, the impulse in some men to 
lead, the desire of other men to be led, and this 
relationship thus created. A group thus formed 
can "lift the whole of God's big purpose for man- 
kind a notch nearer the summit." The leader 
needs the power of the single motive. He can 
attain efficient leadership only by subordinating 
all within his personality to one dominant purpose. 
But this purpose cannot be a narrow or unworthy 
purpose; it can be nothing less than the social 
motive. Such leadership can be given only by a 
life of integrity. As there is to be oneness of 
motive, so also the whole life must have the one- 
ness of integrity. But beyond integrity as a moral 
quality is the oneness that a man may attain with 
the Divine Spirit. Even the appeal to the moral 
^nature, to the conscience, does not touch the high- 
est point in personality. But with the vast major- 
ity of men the pressure of the unseen, is so con- 
stant and deep that, however little they may re- 
veal to their companions their inmost thoughts, 
it forms a subconsciousness as truly a part of their 



CHRIST THE PIONEER OF HUMANITY 123 

experience as the sobbing of the wind is a part of 
the storm. If a leader lack this highest power, 
the time must come when his leadership will break 
down. This leads, in the argument, to a char- 
acterization of Jesus as the supreme leader of 
men. After summing up the requirements of the 
character of a great leader, Bishop Brent says: 
"We have such a leader. We have done every- 
thing conceivable to make J esus as distant as pos- 
sible, from obscuring him under a veil of theologi- 
cal and ecclesiastical confusion to reducing him 
to a mere local hero whose life went out many 
centuries ago." And he goes on to show that the 
leadership of J esus Christ became a life before it 
was reduced to a theology; that it was a thing 
of the character before becoming a thing of the 
intellect. 

I 

Christ goes before us, leading in the world's 
thought in all matters of the greatest moment. 
Dr. Amory H. Bradford said in a sermon a while 
ago that in these days we are sometimes asked, 
"Is it possible for a thinking man to be a Chris- 
tian?" But he says he would put the question 
another way, and ask, "Is it conceivable that a 
thinking man can do otherwise than accept Jesus 
as his leader ?" For he gives us the profound and 
only satisfying answers to the deepest of problems 
of our earthly existence. If life is to be worth 



124 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

living, if we are to have power and usefulness, 
if there is to be something of joy, there are certain 
questions which must be answered. We must have 
some clear and definite idea as to whether we are 
simply in the hands of a vast and heartless and 
everlasting process, or whether we are in the 
hands of infinite and everlasting Love. 

~No one else has ever given us satisfactory an- 
swers to these questions. Men use such words as 
power, law, force, but you know there is no com- 
fort for your heart in such answers. What does 
Christ say? He teaches his disciples to pray to 
"Our Father, who art in heaven." Nobody else 
has spoken to us words like that. He says to us 
in substance, "Do not consult the wise men, if you 
want to know about the Person who holds the uni- 
verse in his hands, but go into your own homes, 
and think of all the strength of fatherhood, and 
all the love of motherhood, and remember that as 
the heavens are high above the earth, so the love 
and the strength of God are above that of earthly 
parents." 

~No wonder Jesus said of himself on one occa- 
sion that a greater than Jonah, who was simply a 
messenger of God calling men to repentance, and 
a greater than Solomon, who was simply a wise 
man, was represented in himself, was among them. 
Christ brings men to God. He leads them in their 
thinking about God. He nerves us for faith's 



CHRIST THE PIONEER OF HUMANITY 125 

enterprise of quest, and sustains us in its pursuit. 
Christ made men know that their aspirations to 
acquaintance and fellowship with God were not 
alien or exotic. When we listen to Christ we 
know that God's finger has touched us far down 
in our secret beings. The instinct of prayer, the 
faculties of moral desire and reverence, the wist- 
ful longing for something better than the conven- 
tional round, the intuition of trust and holiness— 
these stirrings of life are set up within us by the 
presence of Christ in this world of men. 

II 

Christ goes before us, showing us the way to 
personal development of character and noble per- 
sonality. Christ is the world's leader in showing 
how strong character and charming personality 
can be developed and wrought out in the furnace 
of trial and suffering. The old Hindus tried to 
ignore suffering and get rid of it by saying that 
there is no suffering. The Buddhists said the be- 
ginning of enlightenment is the realization of the 
'nothingness of things, and we have many modern 
examples of the revival of all this sort of teaching. 
But all the while the reality of life presses upon 
us. Men do sicken and suffer and die without any 
reference to their philosophy on the subject. Who 
shall bring us to wisdom? Who shall teach us 



126 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

life's meaning? Christ is the only teacher who 
shows us that the God in the heavens who wishes 
us to say "Our Father" is not a God callous as 
to suffering, but a God living in the life of the 
human race, afflicted in its affliction, and bruised 
and wounded by its iniquity. Christ shows us 
that everywhere the love of God is seen in suffer- 
ing and sacrifice. The compassion of men is not 
the accusation of his goodness, but the revelation 
and proof of it. The sorrows, the sacrifices, the 
martyrdoms of the world's helpers are his. Dr. 
Hunter, the English preacher, says: "What a 
gospel the cross preaches to men and women 
troubled by the woes of life ! Standing up against 
the dark sky, it says that God suffers in and with 
his creatures and his children, that he is the chief 
of sufferers, that it is his pity and love and sym- 
pathy we see in the pity and love and sympathy of 
Christ and of all Christlike souls." 

Christ himself tells us that for the sake of 
humanity he sanctifies himself through sufferings, 
and Paul assures us that the Captain of our salva- 
tion could be made perfect only through suffer- 
ing. Strong, beautiful, perfect character can be 
wrought out only through the discipline of strug- 
gle, and restraint, and disappointment, and suf- 
fering. Christ is the leader in this thought, that 
only in personal sanctification of himself, in 
personal holiness of character, can there be devel- 



CHRIST THE PIONEER OF HUMANITY 127 

oped the personality that will be of most blessing 
to the world. 

There are two great pictures, each of them by 
a famous artist, which bring out vividly this con- 
ception. One picture represents a woman in a 
hospital. The woman is a princess, fair and 
beautiful to look upon, but the hospital is most 
loathsome, because it is the home of a number of 
dying lepers. And this fair and beautiful woman 
is represented as wiping the face of a dying leper. 
That picture is a symbol of the dignity and beauty 
of social service. But there hangs by its side an- 
other picture by another great artist. It repre- 
sents a woman in her secret chamber in the atti- 
tude of prayer. Beside her stands an angel. She 
is looking over the open pages of the Bible, which 
are illuminated, and the legend tells us that while 
she knelt there in that place of prayer, seven times 
she was interrupted, seven times there came a call 
at her door, a demand upon her love, upon her 
charity — a sevenfold recognition of the needs of 
her brother man. And seven times, with a pa- 
tience and with a moral beauty beyond all descrip- 
tion, she goes to the door, relieves these cases of 
necessity, and returns to her knees, to her attitude 
of prayer. And this is a picture of the supreme 
dignity and great worth of personal holiness. It 
is to such a life that Jesus is ever leading 
humanity. ? 



128 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



III 

Christ goes before us, leading us and teaching 
us our true relation to one another. It is Christ 
who teaches us that culture and learning and holi- 
ness reach their true climax and find their true 
mission only when they serve our fellow men. It 
is Christ who tells us that we cannot truly trust 
God unless we love our fellow men. Neither can 
we truly love God and not trust our fellow men. 
I mean if we really love and trust God, we must 
accept our fellow men as God's children, and know 
that in the humblest and poorest and meanest of 
them there is something of the divine childhood 
to God that makes them worthy of our sympathy 
and brotherhood. 

Some one truly says that the two greatest 
words of life and religion are "trust" and "love." 
In reality they both mean the same thing. It 
does not matter whether we say, "Trust God 
and love men," or "Love God and trust men." 
Our trust in men must be a part of our trust 
in God, and our love for men must be a part of 
our love for God, for the God we know is incar- 
nate in man. Just as it is of no use to say, as 
Saint John tells us, that we love God if we do 
not also love men, so it is of no use for us 
to say that we trust God if we do not trust 
men. 



CHRIST THE PIONEER OF HUMANITY 129 



I will not learn to doubt my kind; 

If bread is poison, what is food? 

If man is evil, what is good? 
I'll cultivate a friendly mind. 

I see not far, but this I see: 
If man is false, then naught is true; 
If faith is not the golden clue 

To life, then all is mystery. 

I know not much, but this I know: 
That not in hermit's calm retreat, 
But in the storied busy street 

The angels most do come and go. 

Who to the infinite would rise 

Should know this one thing ere he starts: 
That all its steps are human hearts, 

To love mankind is to be wise. 



I will not learn to doubt my kind. 

If man is false, then false am I; 

If on myself I can't rely, 
Then where shall faith a foothold find? 



IV 

Christ clarifies our vision, and goes before us 
into the immortal life. It is J esus only who makes 
us know that though the universe back into the 
darkness roll, 

Two lights death cannot dim, 
God and the soul. 



130 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

It is Christ who teaches us that eternal life 
begins here and now. He teaches us that immor- 
tality will never become real to anyone, as a belief , 
except through his getting into his life something 
of incomparable and eternal worth. When God 
visits a man and gives him the assurance that he 
is dear to him, immortality is no longer incredible. 
Science may make its guesses, but the hope of 
mankind rests in the resurrection of Jesus Christ 
and in the glorious consciousness of the eternal life 
which is known in redeemed hearts and purified 
lives. The apostle says, "Blessed be the God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according 
to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto 
a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ 
from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and 
undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in 
heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God 
through faith unto salvation." Words like those 
are themselves evidence for immortality. The 
breath of immortality is in them; they have the 
elevation and moral grandeur of a hope so great. 

When William Jennings Bryan was a young 
man in college he wrote to Colonel Ingersoll and 
asked him for his views on God and immortality. 
His secretary answered that the great infidel was 
not at home, but inclosed a copy of a speech which 
covered the question. Bryan read it with eager- 
ness, and found that he had expressed himself 



C HEIST THE PIONEER OF HUMANITY 131 

about like this: "I do not know that there is no 
God. I simply say, 'I do not know.' I do not say 
that there is no life beyond the grave ; I simply 
say, 6 1 do not know.' " What a cheerless program 
that is compared with the program of Jesus Christ ! 
In those sorrowing days when he was preparing 
for his sacrifice on the cross, Jesus gathered his 
friends about him and said: "Let not your heart 
be troubled : ye believe in God, believe also in me. 
In my Father's house are many mansions: if it 
were not so, I would have told you. I go to pre- 
pare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a 
place for you, I will come again, and receive you 
unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be 
also." And all around the world, in city and in 
country, in the palace of the rich and in the hovel 
of the poor, among the learned and intelligent, as 
well as among converts recently gathered from 
heathenism, men and women every day of the 
world are finding those words of Jesus true. Hav- 
ing lost the sting of death by the forgiveness of 
their sins, through the atoning blood of Jesus 
Christ, they come to the end of their earthly life in 
peace, and realize at the last that Jesus does come 
to receive them and give them welcome into the 
Father's house. God help us that we may be com- 
forted and strengthened with this glorious faith, 
so that we shall be able to realize the vision of the 
Christian poet: 



132 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

On that old faith I will take hold once more — 

Now that the long waves bear me to the shore, 

And life's brief voyage is o'er; 

Near is the looked-for land — 

One wild leap on the strand 

And the dear souls I loved of old 

I shall again behold, 

And arms that held me once, shall hold again. 

In blinding ways of men 

Long did I mourning doubt, 

Saying, "Into the universe have they gone out 

And shall be lost 

In the wide waves of unseen, infinite force; 

For nature heeds not all the bitter cost 

But rushes on its course 

Unto the far, determined goal, 

Without self-conscious knowledge, or remorse." 

But now the time is come, the test draws near, 

And sudden my soul is innocent of fear. 

ye beloved! I come! I cry 

With the old passion ye shall not deny! 

1 know you, as I knew 
When life was in its dew; 

Ah, naught of me has suffered inward change, 
Nor can be change essential even in you, 

However far the freer spirit's range. 
Soul shall find soul; there is no distance 
That bars love's brave insistence, 
And nothing truly dies 
In all the infinite realm of woe and weal; 
Throughout creation's bound thrill answers thrill 
And love to love replies. 



CHAPTER X 



The Marks of a Growing Manhood 

Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of 
the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown 
man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness 
of Christ.— Eph. 4. IS. 

Since by common consent of civilized mankind 
Christ is the supreme Man of our race, the one 
hope of full-grown manhood lies in a manhood that 
is growing after his kind and to be like him. To 
Paul's idea, the Christian ideal of manhood meant 
the development of all sides of man's nature into 
power and activity ; the training of every part into 
harmony; the enriching of every faculty with 
whatever is sweet and generous and genial and 
beautiful. And we are sure that a true man after 
Christ will be the most noble and beautiful thing 
on earth — the freest, the most joyous, the most 
fruitful in all goodness. No picture was ever 
painted, no statue was ever carved, no work of art 
was ever conceived, that was half so beautiful as 
is a living man thoroughly developed upon the pat- 
tern of Jesus Christ. 

Young men who are fitting themselves for influ- 
ential careers are always put under stress of temp- 
tation to regard the temporal and physical aspects 
of life as more important than the spiritual and 

133 



134 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

eternal, but a growing manhood demands that 
these be kept together. Henry Ward Beecher once 
asked if men should dispute as to which is the more 
important, the forward sight upon a gun, or the 
hind sight ? In its place each is the more impor- 
tant. If you take true aim, you must draw the 
fore sight through the hind sight, put them both in 
range, and work them both all the time. This is 
the only world that we can live in at present. 
Human life, human society, and civil government 
are God's means of grace. It is your drill-ground. 
And these means of grace are to be used as men 
use their machines. The world is grandly con- 
stituted to develop manhood in those who know 
how to use it. But it is a terrible thing to see 
how men squander manhood in this world ; to see 
them pass through all this wonderful system of 
education in the civil and social world, and, instead 
of gaining, losing the best that is in them as they 
go. A man ought to be in the work of life like 
a piece of iron in a machine shop. He ought to 
gather, as he goes through the trying experiences 
of youth and manhood, symmetry, shapeliness, 
temper, quality, adaptation, so that when he issues 
from the further side, he is a full-grown man. 
But instead, we see men going out of this great 
workshop of human life which God has erected for 
the building of men, and they have little by little 
stripped themselves of their resources and come 



THE MARKS OF A GROWING MANHOOD 135 

out bankrupt and useless instead of rejoicing in a 
full-orbed manhood. 

Let us study together briefly some of the marks 
of a growing manhood of the highest type. 

I 

It was Paul's theory, and it is borne out by the 
history of Christian civilization, that full-grown 
manhood can come only through keeping our eyes 
on the perfect ideal of manhood in the person of 
Jesus Christ. The leader dictates what the fol- 
lower will develop in himself. A man who knew 
what war meant, once wrote that he would have 
more trust in an army of sheep led by a lion than 
in an army of lions led by a sheep. Man con- 
tains all things : the sheep and the lion, the coward 
and the Christ. If you are a coward, you will find 
men sheep — mean, timid things, always in terror 
for their skins, thinking only of their grazing 
ground, and under your leadership that is all that 
will be developed in them. But Christ came and 
turned his eyes in noble sympathy and magnetic 
interest on harlots, thieves, poor, timid laboring 
folk, and they left their ease and their joys, and 
they followed him, rejoicing, through suffering 
unto death. Out of these common, mean materials 
he developed heroes and martyrs and saints. 

The glory of Christianity lies in the power of 
Christ to attract what is best in men and women 



'136 4 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

and arouse them to growth toward the highest man- 
hood. Whymper, the famous mountain-climber, 
tells us that for a long time before he scaled the 
Matterhorn it had laid its spell upon him. No 
foot of man had ever stood on the summit of 
that mountain. The peasants who lived at its 
base declared that it could not be scaled. Many of 
the guides advised him to desist from his attempt 
to do what was not possible. There were other 
peaks that might be conquered. But the Matter- 
horn had laid its spell upon and called this man. 
At last, by a way that had been deemed impossible, 
he stood upon the summit. To-day knotted ropes 
hang in difficult places. Mountaineers less skilled 
can now reach that peak. So we look at the life of 
Jesus until we feel his spell cast upon us and he 
becomes our inspiration and strength. The ideal 
Christian life towers above us. Many men content 
to live in the low valleys and marshes of selfishness 
and greed tell us that the summit is unattainable. 
They assure us that the Christian life is impossible 
under these modern conditions which surround us. 
But if the spell of Jesus is upon us, we shall not 
be discouraged, but press forward and be willing 
to deny ourselves whatever is necessary that we 
may make the upward climb into the realm of 
ever-nobler manhood. 

Whymper tells the story of a friend who joined 
him for a stiff climb to a mountain's summit. This 



THE MARKS OF A GROWING MANHOOD 137 

man came heavily laden. Science was to be 
regarded : his pockets were stuffed with books ; 
heights and angles were to be observed, and his 
knapsack was filled with instruments ; hunger was 
to be guarded against, his shoulders were orna- 
mented with a huge nimbus of bread, and a leg of 
mutton swung behind from his knapsack. So the 
friends began to climb. All were carrying their own 
packs. None could relieve the man with stuffed 
pockets and bulging knapsack. As the angle 
steepened he began to groan, till at last the very 
cliffs were groaning in echo. He came to the point 
where.one great jump had to be taken. The laden 
man came across, but minus some of his provisions. 

We cannot carry everything to the top. Paul 
found that out and says : "What things were gain 
to me, these have I counted loss for Christ Yea, 
verily, and I count all things to be loss for the 
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my 
Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things, 
and do count them but refuse, that I may gain 
Christ." Manhood is the great thing ; and money, 
or fame, or any physical success comes at too high 
a price if a man must barter his manhood in order 
to get it. If a man must choose between the bag- 
gage or a failure to reach the summit of a full- 
grown manhood, if he be wise, the baggage will go 
tumbling. Simple fare on the summit has more 
flavor than a sumptuous feast in the valley swamps. 



138 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



II 

Another mark of a growing manhood is the 
struggle against obstacles — to do every duty as it 
presents itself. No great manhood will ever be 
developed if we wait for ideal conditions in which 
to do the ideal thing. Perhaps you have heard the 
story of the man who died, and, on making his bow 
to Saint Peter, was, somewhat to his surprise, most 
cordially received and asked to state just how he 
wished things to be. He at once asked for all the 
things he could think of as needful for the filling 
up of his cup of perfect happiness, the things* 
which in this life he had longed for in vain. They 
were immediately his, and he delighted in them 
for a time. But, at the end of one short century, 
Peter, on his return, was met with complaints. 
None of the things asked for had their old quality. 
Peter said nothing and went away. At the end of 
the second century he returned, and this time the 
man bitterly upbraided him. He said he was 
miserable beyond words. Everything he had de- 
manded had deteriorated to such an extent that life 
was absolutely intolerable. Her said, "This heaven 
of yours is a fraud." At this Peter held up his 
hands and exclaimed: "Heaven! Did you think 
this was heaven?" 

This allegory is true to human experience. "No 
life can be interesting to you, permanently, that 
does not mean struggle toward higher and nobler 



THE MARKS OF A GROWING MANHOOD 139 

achievement. This is the secret of immortal youth. 
Sometimes we see an old man in whose mouth 
everything has turned to ashes because no high 
emotion and no lofty struggle has possessed him. 
Then, again, you see another as old as he, but 
with all the keen interest of a child. To him all 
the years that he has traveled have been but a 
beginning. His is the eager delight of the endless 
journey. The difference lies in the art of learn- 
ing to set ever higher and further ahead the 
delights that tempt you, so that year by year life 
grows larger instead of less. J ust because you are 
a man, to be happy and strong and at your best 
you must struggle and climb and aspire as long 
as you live. 

At a certain place in the Alps there is a monu- 
ment to a guide who had perished when attempt- 
ing to make the ascent of the mountain. The 
simple inscription on the stone is, "He died climb- 
ing." What a noble tribute to a noble man ! And 
wherever we die, that should be the story of every 
one of us : To set our faces toward the heights and 
struggle upward to the last, that we may find that 
the last is itself but a beginning to still nobler 
career and achievement. 

Ill 

But, after all, the supreme characteristic of a 
growing manhood, after we have the true ideal, is 



140 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

patience. "Till we attain." Keep your appetite 
for the best. Struggle for it. But the power to 
be patient and wait for it without surrendering 
to something lower is the supreme mark of a grow- 
ing manhood. 

J ohn Bunyan has a scene in which Passion and 
Patience are the chief characters. Passion seemed 
to be much discontented, but Patience was very 
quiet. Then Christian asked : "What is the reason 
of the discontent of Passion?" The Interpreter 
answered: "The Governor would have him stay for 
his best things till the beginning of next year, yet 
he will have all now, but Patience is willing to 
wait. Passion must have all his good things now 
and here ; Patience will have his best things last." 
You have there a very clear picture of the differ- 
ence between men. True greatness waits on 
patience. In the company of William Pitt a con- 
versation once took place as to the quality most 
necessary in a prime minister. While one said 
"Eloquence," another "Knowledge," and another 
"Toil," Pitt said, "The main requisite is patience." 
The same lesson is writ large in every great life. 
Darwin said to one of his friends : "If I had not 
been so great an invalid, I should not have done 
nearly so much work." Thomas Carlyle observes, 
"We will not complain of Dante's miseries; had 
all gone well with him, as he wished it, Florence 
would have had another prosperous Lord Mayor, 



THE MARKS OF A GROWING MANHOOD 141 

but the world would have lost the Divina Com- 
media" 

Tennyson has been admired by all the world for 
his beautiful poems in which there is so much sung 
of unstained love between man and maid and hus- 
band and wife. But no less charming than Ten- 
nyson's love poems is his love-patience. He was 
early fascinated with the noble Emily Sellwood, 
and he might soon have married her had he been 
willing to surrender his ideals and to set before 
himself money rather than truth or art as the object 
of his work. For he had deliberately chosen poetry 
as the duty of his life, and hence, until circum- 
stances changed and God willed otherwise, he 
patiently toiled and waited. At twenty-seven 
years of age he was earning a mere pittance, and 
there was no prospect of money in his high call- 
ing. Passion pointed out various ways of gather- 
ing a bag of treasure, but Patience was content 
to wait — fourteen long years, as it happened — till 
the divine clock struck the hour. Observe the 
sequel: "The peace of God came into my life 
when I married her," said Tennyson in his lat- 
tei days. 

Those of you who have read Robert Browning 
studiously have noticed how he likes to take up 
the cause of unobserved and apparently unsuc- 
cessful people. He has great sympathy with hon- 
orable failure after an earnest effort, but he makes 



142 THE GBEAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



them fight and strive for a high ideal. They fight 
a good fight, and the manner of the fighting shows 
the character of their manhood. Take the case 
of Paracelsus, a doctor of the sixteenth century, 
who sought to acquire such knowledge as should 
permanently benefit mankind; he was willing to 
attempt the seemingly impossible, and to make 
enormous sacrifices, if only the goal could be 
reached. 

I go to prove my soul! 
I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first 
I ask not; but unless God send his hail 
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, 
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive: 
He guides me and the bird. In his good time. 

Christ, who is the ideal of our Christian man- 
hood, is himself our supreme example of patience. 
When we are on the path of duty and doing our 
best, and are tempted to take some nigh cut to suc- 
cess rather than that of truest honor, we need to look 
to Christ, At Cana the mother of Jesus, anxious 
and distressed because of the shortcomings of the 
caterer, spoke to her Divine Son as if to suggest 
that he should act at once. "Mine hour is not yet 
come," was the reply of Jesus. This was the 
answer to much else in the life of the Saviour. 
He could bide his time. He had the strength to 
wait. Christ was content to live long in obscurity. 
For thirty years he lived in that little town of 



THE MARKS OF A GROWING MANHOOD 143 

ISTazareth in the home and shop of a village car- 
penter. Did ever patience have a grander setting ? 
And the man who is determined to grow to the 
full measure of this noble, Christlike manhood 
must bide his time, as did his Lord. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes in his greatest poem, 
"The Chambered Nautilus/' tells us how the little 
shell fish comes into being in that little tiny shell, 
shaped like a horn. Year after year the spiral 
grows, and as it grows the little mollusk draws 
itself onward and closes a screen behind on the 
small chamber in which it first lived. 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 

That spread his lustrous coil; 

Still, as the spiral grew, 

He left the last year's dwelling for the new, 

Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door, 

Stretched in its last-found home, and knew the old no 
more. 

And the poet finds in this growing life of the 
chambered nautilus, ever aspiring to something 
better, ever leaving the old and struggling forward 
to the nobler opportunity, a promise and a 
prophecy of the enlargement and expansion of the 
human spirit. Exulting in the freedom of career 
and achievement suggested, he exclaims : 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 
Child of the wandering sea, 



144 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

Cast from her lap, forlorn! 
Prom thy dead lips, a clearer note is born 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn. 
While on mine ear it rings, 

Through the deep caves of thought, I hear a voice that 
sings: 

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll! 

Leave the low-vaulted past! 

Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!" 



CHAPTER XI 



Facing Life's Sackcloth With Unblinking 

Eyes 

None might enter within the king's gate clothed with 
sackcloth. — Esth. 4. 2. 

Having therefore such a hope, we use great boldness 
of speech.-— -2 Cor. 3. 12. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in one of the most 
weird of all those "Twice-Told Tales''" which have 
charmed two generations of readers, retells the 
story of a Mr. Hooper, who in the old New 
England days was minister in the village church 
at Milford, Massachusetts. He appeared one Sun- 
day morning wearing a crape veil, and from that 
hour no mortal ever looked upon his face again. 
He was young, quiet, refined, and no one could 
suspect him of an act of mere buffoonery. He was 
about thirty years old when he first began to wear 
the veil, and he occupied that one pulpit all his 
life, until, one by one, the men and women who 
had looked upon his youthful features in his earlier 
ministry were all carried to their last resting place, 
and Mr. Hooper had one congregation in the 
church and a larger one in the churchyard. 

Naturally, at first, there was a great deal of 
gossip, and even incipient scandal, but when the 

145 



146 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

startled surprise passed away it was only to give 
place to a vague dread. Children fled from the 
minister, frightened; among the elders the most 
frivolous were sober : his very presence filled them 
with superstitious terror. The veil, worn year by 
year, seemed in some mysterious way to separate 
him from them, and from his fellow creatures 
everywhere. 

Of course, it was a matter that was talked about 
a great deal. People asked what sin there was 
upon his conscience, what crime had he committed, 
that he should hide his face from the gaze of men 
and women as though he would even hide it from 
the searching gaze of God. The only person who 
dared ask questions was the woman who was to 
have been his bride. He refused to answer her, 
and they parted, the veil upon his face, the crape 
upon her heart. On through middle age to old 
age he passed, and his last hour came. The min- 
ister of a neighboring parish knelt by his dying 
bed. He entreated the departing man to reveal 
at last the secret of the years. When the old man 
persisted in his refusal, the younger minister 
exclaimed, "Dark old man, with what horrible 
crime upon thy conscience dost thou enter into the 
presence of thy God ?" Then the old man raised 
himself in bed, his breath heaving and rattling in 
his throat. He flung out his hands as though he 
grasped at life and held it back, and, with the 



facing life's sackcloth 147 

veil seeming still to incarnate the gathered terrors 
of the years, he exclaimed to the people around his 
bedside: "Why do you tremble at me alone? 
Tremble rather at each other. Have men avoided 
me, and women showed no pity and children 
screamed and fled, only because of the black veil 
on my face ? What but the mystery which it so 
obscurely symbolizes has made its terror for you 
and they? When the friend shows his inmost 
thoughts to his friend, and the lover to his best 
beloved, when the creature no longer seeks to hide 
a secret from the most high God, then blame me for 
this symbol under which I have lived and died. 
I look around, and on every face I see a black 
veil." 

If we can enter into the spirit of Hawthorne's 
teaching in regard to this morbid eccentricity, I 
think we may have some illumination on the theme 
we are to study. Our problem is how to meet 
the hard things of life. 

I 

One way to meet them is that of King Ahasu- 
erus, who made the rule which we have chosen 
for our first text, that no one clothed in sackcloth— 
which indicated mourning, and anguish, and sor- 
row — should enter into the king's palace. The 
king would only let people come into his presence 
arrayed in bright colors and showing a cheerful 



148 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



countenance. He was determined to shut out of 
thought and out of sight the hard and troublous 
questions which try men's souls. A great many 
people have tried to do that, but it has never suc- 
ceeded. Goethe made it one of the rules of his 
life to avoid everything that could suggest painful 
ideas, but they found him out in the end. When 
the physician prescribed blisters for that strange 
Russian woman, Marie Bashkirtseff, to check the 
ravages of tuberculosis, the vain, cynical girl 
wrote: "I will put on as many blisters as they 
like. I shall be able to hide the mark by bodices 
trimmed with flowers, and lace, and tulle, and a 
thousand other things that are worn without being 
required ; it may even look pretty. Ah, I am 
comforted." 

I When Marie Antoinette passed through the 
streets on her wedding day in Paris, strict orders 
were sent out to the police that the lame, and the 
blind, and the crippled, and the ragged were to be 
carefully kept out of her way, lest the sight of them 
should detract from her joy and happiness at her 
reception ; but it was not a great while before that 
gay butterfly of happiness had a very close view 
of the wretched and the miserable. 

We have in our own time a popular fad, largely 
built up on the idea of keeping cheerful and happy 
by shutting your eyes to pain and sorrow, and the 
hard things of life ; but, like all the rest, it is sure 



FACING LIFERS SACKCLOTH 



149 



to fail. Philosophize as we will, pain is sure to 
find us out, and the arrows from the quiver of sor- 
row will pierce our hearts. , 

) 

II 

There is another way of meeting the hard 
experiences of our lives. Those people are mere 
materialists who are described as the people who 
eat and drink and are merry, because to-morrow 
they die. Many such people are simply curious 
about life and look on it as a play. They sound 
the experiences of pleasure and sorrow as they 
would go to a sensational drama. They are easily 
moved to tears at the imaginary sorrows painted 
by the novelist, or acted upon the stage, but it 
awakens and develops in them no deep human 
sympathy or brotherhood. Many such people look 
upon the open sores of the world simply to find 
there a new sensation. Some years ago, when Mr. 
Jacob Riis and others called attention to the inde- 
scribable horrors of tenement-house conditions in 
some of our great Eastern cities, and the degra- 
dation and shame of slum life, which had grown 
up almost unnoticed, it came to be a very popu- 
lar thing in ultra-fashionable, wealthy society 
circles for women to make up slumming parties 
and spend the night amid the unspeakable degra- 
dations of overcrowded city slums. All this was 
a prurient curiosity, a false sympathy that had no 



150 THE GKEAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

real sincerity back of it. There was behind it no 
honest purpose of helpfulness or brotherhood. 

There are others who face life's sorrows and 
difficult experiences, realizing them keenly, but 
meeting them with the stoicism of the American 
Indian. The pain and anguish of human life is 
very real to them, but it is something to be 
endured; it is a part of the day's work. There 
have been some great souls of this type. Of such 
Dr. Robertson Nicholl says that they meditate on 
sin, and grief, and death, upon the vast sum of 
human woe, upon their little and slow means for 
diminishing it, till the heart spends itself in fierce 
and hopeless throbs. The thought beats upon the 
brain like a hammer on an anvil. The waves of 
mournful thought cannot be stemmed, but flow in 
vain. 

Ill 

It is a great relief to turn to the other way of 
facing the hard things of life. That is suggested 
to us by Paul's words which we have chosen as a 
second text. Speaking of the Christian's faith, 
Paul says, "Seeing then that we have such hope, 
we use great plainness of speech." Paul speaks 
of the older days under Moses with the veil on the 
face, but declares there is no veil on the face of 
Jesus Christ, and that Christianity is able to face 
the hard things of life with unblinking eyes and 
with bold speech. Let us note some of the things 



FACING LIFERS SACKCLOTH 151 

that we must face in which Christianity takes 
away our fear and gives us courage. 

1. First of all, let us rote the hard problem of 
sin. That is one of the terrible facts of human 
life which we all have to face. Now, Christianity 
does not deal lightly with sin. Sin never seems so 
serious and solemn as in the light of the Bible 
and in the presence of the purity of J esus Christ. 
I came across a little poem the other day, with no 
name attached. It sounds like Kipling. It illus- 
trates beyond any possibility of mistake the Chris- 
tian thought of the tremendous seriousness of sin. 
It says : 

The three ghosts on the lonesome road 

Spake each to one another, 
"Whence came that stain about your mouth 

No lifted hand may cover?" 
"From eating of forbidden fruit, 
Brother, my brother." 

The three ghosts on the sunless road 

Spake each to one another, 
"Whence came that red burn on your foot 

No dust nor ash may cover?" 
"I stamped a neighbor's hearth-flame out, 
Brother, my brother." 

The three ghosts on the windless road 

Spake each to one another, 
"Whence came that blood upon your hand 

No other hand may cover?" 
"Prom breaking of a woman's heart, 
Brother, my brother." 



152 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

"Yet on the earth clean men we walked, 

Glutton and Thief and Lover; 
White flesh and fair it hid our stains 

That no man might discover.'* 
"Naked the soul goes up to God, 
Brother, my brother." 

Where, then, does the Christian get his boldness 
of speech when he faces this awful fact of sin? 
My answer is, At the cross of Jesus Christ. In the 
famous Yosemite Valley, in California, there is 
a place called "Inspiration Point," because from it 
you can command a view of the whole valley — for- 
ward, backward, this side, and that. So, in the 
center of the ages, in the center of the gospel story 
of the life of Christ, there is one great "Inspira- 
tion Point." It is the cross on Calvary. It looks 
back and explains the birth of J esus to save from 
all sins ; it looks forward to the fullness of the 
times when all God's redeemed ones shall be 
brought to glory. From the cross we get the true 
character of man's sin and of God's matchless love ; 
from the cross, the only hope for a lost and sinful 
humanity. This is God's "Inspiration Point," 
and, standing there, we can understand Paul's 
vehement cry, "God forbid that I should glory, save 
in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." 

2. Another of the hard things of life which the 
Christian hope enables men to face with courage 
is the problem of sorrow and trouble. In the first 
place, we are encouraged with the assurance that 



FACING LIFE'S SACKCLOTH 153 

in the end it is to be banished. John saw in his 
vision the time coming when " There shall be no 
more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall 
there be any more pain : for the former things are 
passed away." But Christianity faces the fact that 
trouble and sorrow are a part of the experience of 
this earth]y life, and does not make light of it, but 
faces it and overcomes it by putting the accent on 
the spiritual instead of the physical life. A great 
deal depends upon where you put the accent as to its 
effect on your vision. I once traveled on a railroad 
train where everybody was complaining because the 
brakeman, in shouting out the names of the local 
stations, uttered the word "station" very clear and 
plain, and dwelt long and lovingly on it, but 
snapped over the name of the station with such 
rapidity and lack of emphasis that no one who did 
not know the country knew where to get off. So, 
it is possible to put the accent of your thought on 
the physical life and surroundings until you lose 
all clear vision of the great things that make char- 
acter that shall live forever. I can bear trouble, 
if it is only temporary, and is helping to fashion 
a nobler personality which is soon to come to tri- 
umph. Look at that great picture of Christ's. He 
shows us Dives, the rich man, clothed in purple 
and fine linen. What a table he keeps! faring 
sumptuously every day ; and the thoughtless look- 
er-on says: "What a success he has made of it! 



154 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

Look at what he has done. Look how he has got on. 
See how he has got up. He has everything that 
heart can wish!" Then there is the other picture 
— Lazarus, the poor beggar, in his rags and sores, 
whose wounds the dogs licked. There is trouble 
for you. He is hungry for the crumbs that drop 
from the rich man's table ; and the same thought- 
less world says : "There is a failure. Look at him 
— -what a fiasco he has made of life ! Could any- 
thing be lower, meaner, more miserable?" Ah, 
but wait ! Lazarus has his troubles, but inside that 
ring of trouble there is one of the sweetest, noblest 
characters in the world. Let Christ pull aside the 
veil. Look at these men when character comes to 
its own, and your sympathy is no longer with Laza- 
rus but with Dives. 

The great students of natural science tell us that 
the music of the birds was, at first, in the morning 
of time, only the bird's cry of distress. They tell 
us that originally that which is now such delightful 
music in the forests and the fields was nothing 
more than an exclamation caused by the bird's 
bodily pain and fear ; but, as the ages passed away, 
that primal note of anguish has been evolved and 
differentiated until it has risen into the ecstasy of 
the lark, melted into the silver note of the dove, 
swelled into the rapture of the nightingale, un- 
folded into all the vast and glorious orchestra of 
the summer woods and the tuneful skies. So 



FACING L1FE ? S SACKCLOTH 



155 



Jesus Christ shows us the way out of the discords 
of sorrow and trouble into the supreme music of 
character. 

3. And this brings us naturally to that last 
hard problem of all, which every one of us must 
face, the fact of death. Christianity faces death 
with unblinking eyes. It recognizes that death is 
critical and serious. Christianity looks on death 
as terrible, not simply because it is the end, but 
because it is also a beginning. Paul looked on 
death as the last enemy to be destroyed, but he 
looked death in the face without blinking, with 
great courage, and, indeed, with great joy and 
expectation, because of his fellowship with Christ 
and the assurance that the divine love which had 
redeemed him would continue with him in that 
other room of life beyond the gateway of death. 
To Paul's idea life itself was one great and splen- 
did whole. It was a stream which death did not 
check. We allow ourselves to be so shut in by our 
worldly, physical surroundings that we lose out of 
thought the consciousness that we are even now in 
the eternal life. 



"Oh, where is the sea-?" the fishes cried, 
As they swam its crystal clearness through; 

"We have heard of old of an ocean tide, 
But who has looked on its waters blue? 

The wise ones speak of an infinite sea, 

But who can tell us if such things be?" 



156 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



The lark flew up in the morning bright, 
And sang as she balanced on shining wings, 

Of things that she saw: "I see the light, 
I look on a world of beautiful things; 

But flying and singing everywhere, 

In vain have I sought to find the air." 

So, just because we are living in the infinite, 

we lose consciousness of the infinite. If you are 

standing beside a river, you may mark where it 

passes the boundary of a certain wall, and mark 

again where it passes another wall ; and you may 

study the stream as it passes within those limits 

that you have marked, but the limits are all of 

your making; they have nothing to do with the 

river. The part of the river we see is a part of 

the great ceaseless stream that stretches from the 

mountain to the sea ; so the little span of the River 

of Life, marked by our birth and our death, does 

not cease because it flows around the wall of death 

out of sight. And the glory of Christianity is the 

assurance which it gives the believing heart of the 

continuation of that stream of life flowing on under 

the heavenly Father's love. 

Alas for him who never sees 

The stars shine through his cypress trees! 

Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 

Nor looks to see the breaking day 

Across the mournful marbles play! 

Who has not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own! 



FACING LIFE'S SACKCLOTH 



157 



So the Christian can talk about death with bold 
speech, for to him dying is home-going. Dr. Hillis 
declares that this homing instinct is man's earliest, 
latest, and profoundest instinct. No white clover 
field ever allured honeybees as the unseen realm 
allures and holds the thoughts of philosopher, poet, 
and sage. Heaven tugs hard at the heartstrings. 
The soul's summer land influences hope as the mag- 
netic pole holds the needle. When Tennyson was 
approaching his death, and wished to describe his 
going away from this world, he used these oft- 
quoted words : 

Sunset and evening star, 

And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 

When I put out to sea, 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 

Turns again home. 

Twilight and evening bell, 

And after that the dark! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell, 

When I embark; 

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have crossed the bar. 



CHAPTEE XII 



The Christ Tincture in Human Life 

Christ died and lived again, that he might be the Lord 
of both the dead and the living. — Rom. 14. 9. 

I am . . . the Living one; and I was dead, and 
behold, I am alive forevermore.— Bei;. 1. 18. 

A gentleman was standing before the window 
of an art store where a picture of the crucifixion of 
our Lord was on exhibition; as he gazed he was 
conscious of the approach of another, and, turn- 
ing, beheld a little boy, looking intently at the 
picture also. Noticing that this mite of human- 
ity was a sort of a street arab, he thought he 
would speak to him. So he asked, pointing to the 
picture, "Do you know who it is ?" 

"Yes," came the quick response. "That's our 
Saviour," with a mingled look of pity and sur- 
prise that a grown-up man should not know. With 
an evident desire to enlighten the gentleman fur- 
ther, he continued after a pause: "Them's the 
soldiers, the Roman soldiers, and," with a long- 
drawn sigh, "that woman crying there is his 
mother." He waited, apparently for the man to 
question him further; then he thrust his hands 
into his pockets, and, with a reverent and subdued 
voice, added: "They killed him, mister. Yes, sir; 
they killed him." 

158 



THE CHRIST TINCTURE IN HUMAN LIFE 159 

The gentleman looked at the little ragged fellow, 
and asked, "Where did you learn this ?" 

He replied, "At the mission Sunday school." 

Full of thought regarding the benefits of mission 
Sunday schools, the man turned away and resumed 
his walk, leaving the little boy looking at the pic- 
ture. He had walked nearly a block when he heard 
the boy's childish treble calling: "Mister ! Say, mis- 
ter!" He turned. The boy was running toward 
him, but paused ; then up went his little hand, and, 
with a triumphant sound in his voice, he said : "I 
wanted to tell you he rose again. Yes, mister, he 
rose again." 

His message delivered, the little fellow smiled, 
waved his hand, turned and went his way, feeling 
that having heard the good news, he had done his 
duty by passing it on to another. This is the 
glorious day when we look each other in the face 
with happy courage and rejoice that though he was 
dead, though he died for us, yet he is alive and 
liveth forevermore. 

I am indebted for my theme this morning not 
only to these passages which I have read, but to a 
young saint who lived nearly two hundred years 
ago in England. George Herbert was born of a 
noble family at a time when Christianity was at 
a low ebb in Great Britain. He was a young man 
of splendid gifts and great learning. He was an 
honor man at Cambridge, and when he entered the 



160 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

ministry his friends at court were greatly scandal- 
ized, and pleaded with him not to give himself to 
such a mean career. But good old Isaac Walton 
tells us that to one of these court friends Herbert 
said, "The domestic servants of the King of 
Heaven should be the noblest furniture on earth ; 
and though the iniquities of the late times have 
made clergymen meanly valued, and the sacred 
name of priest contemptible, yet I will labor to 
make it honorable, by consecrating all my learn- 
ing, and all my poor ability, to advance the glory 
of that God that gave them." 

George Herbert died very young, but he left 
some of the sweetest poems in the language, and, 
though his ministerial life lasted less than three 
years, it is said of him that his life was so saintly 
that the meanest men in his parish so loved and 
reverenced him that they would stop their teams 
and let their plows rest in the furrow when they 
heard his bell rung for prayer, that they might 
also offer their devotion to God with him. 

It is this preacher-poet, George Herbert, who, 
speaking of the resurrection of Jesus, says, 

He was all gold when he lay down; he rose 
All tincture. 

You must remember that Herbert wrote in the early 
part of the seventeenth century, and that in his day 
"tincture" was the name given to the substance 
which was the object of the philosopher's quest, 



THE CHRIST TINCTURE IN HUMAN LIFE 161 

because its discovery would enable him to trans- 
mute base metals into gold. We know that this 
is what Herbert meant, for in his description of 
the risen Saviour in a fine Easter poem we have 
the same idea. He sings : 

Rise, heart; the Lord is risen. Sing his praise 
Without delays, 

Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise 

With him mayst rise: 

That, as his death calcined thee to dust, 

His life may make thee gold, and much more just. 

The clear sense of Herbert's lines, 

He was all gold when he lay down; he rose 
All tincture, 

is beautifully given in Dr. George Macdonald's 
paraphrase, himself another preacher-poet. Mac- 
donald says that Christ was entirely good when 
he died, but that he was something greater when 
he arose, for he had gained the power to make 
others good. 

Here, then, is our theme : Christ is not simply 
a good Man, an ideally good Man. There is in 
him that supreme divinity, that Spirit of the God- 
head, which gives him the power to make other men 
like himself. He is the divine tincture in human 
life, which can transmute men of ordinary human 
frailties into the true gold of holiest manhood. 
This little group of friends whom we are accus- 
tomed to call his disciples were very ordinary 
people. They were full of faults and frailties. 



162 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

But under the inspiration of the resurrection of 
Jesus, and through fellowship with the ever-living 
Saviour, they became saints whose goodness has 
been the glory of the church and the encourage- 
ment of humanity in all the years that have passed 
since their day. 

The resurrected Christ has the same power to 
make men good to-day. 

I 

Christ transforms us, first, because his glory 
and his goodness humble us, and then exalts us 
because he reveals to us that in our humblest estate 
there is in us some kinship to himself. 

I have read somewhere the story of a boy who 
grew up in an English village. He had a beauti- 
ful voice, and the villagers thought it was a mar- 
velous voice, and praised him beyond measure. 
Finally his fame was so noised abroad that a 
choirmaster in a distant city, anxious to recruit 
fine voices for his choir, journeyed to the little 
village to investigate the rumor. He found that 
the boy certainly had a strong, sweet voice; but 
there were many defects in it which the quick 
ear of the musician detected. He asked the boy 
if he would come to be trained. The parents con- 
sented, and the boy returned home with the musi- 
cian, with the expectation of remaining several 
months. On the first night after his arrival the 



THE CHEIST TINCTURE IN HUMAN LIFE 163 

choir boys who had had from three to five years 
of training were there to sing, and the country 
lad was placed within full view of the musician's 
eye. At first his face bore the look of rapt expect- 
ancy ; he had never heard anything like that ; then 
it flushed, then tears flowed down his cheeks, and 
the boy sobbed until the professor out of sympathy 
asked : "Why is this ? Is it mother or home you 
cry for ?" 

"No," said the boy, "I never heard singing like 
that. I thought I could sing. They all told me I 
could; but if that is singing, I can never sing. 
Let me go home ; it is useless for me to stay." 

But the wise musician knew that this sincere 
humility was the beginning of true possibility. 

My friend, it is only when we have heard the 
infinite beauty of perfect music that we know our 
own limitations, and it is only when we stand in 
the light and glory of Calvary and in the matchless 
sunrise of Easter morning that we know what 
the infinite love of God can do to make men good 
and holy and lift them up into communion with 
heaven itself. 

It would do no good to make us humble by 
revealing to us the matchless goodness and glory 
of the risen Christ if it were not true that there 
was in us a divine kinship to him, and the possi- 
bility, through the inspiration of his presence and 
influence over us, to become like him. 



164 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

I read only the other day an exceedingly inter- 
esting account of a man who lives in London who 
is interested in rare and beautiful plants. A 
friend of this man who had been in South America 
in the region of the Amazon brought him home 
a rare tree. In the winter he keeps it in the hot- 
house, but when summer comes he carries it into 
his garden. So beautiful is the bloom that he 
gave garden parties that his friends might behold 
its wondrous flowers. One summer day he noticed 
a strange thing that set his pulses throbbing— 
a singular fruit had begun to set. Sending 
for an expert scientist, they took counsel to- 
gether. They were sure that this was the only 
tree of the kind in the city, and, so far as they 
knew, in Europe, and they could not understand 
from whence had come the pollen that had ferti- 
lized the plant. They published the story in the 
papers, and that story brought the explanation. 
A merchant wrote that years before he had brought 
to Marseilles a young plant from the Amazon. 
The pollen from that tree several hundred miles 
away had been carried on the wings of the wind, 
over hill and valley and forest, until it found out 
the kindred blossoms that awaited its coming. 

My dear friends, it is like that with humanity. 
Lost and degraded and scarred by sin, still there 
is in us something of the divine sonship to God. 
We are helpless until the pollen from heaven falls 



THE CHRIST TINCTURE IN HUMAN LIFE 165 

upon the blossoms of our lives. Christ put aside 
the glory of heaven, came down to earth, and set 
himself to grow in the midst of our human life. 
In life, in death, in triumph over the grave, we 
have in him a perfect manhood, glorified by the 
presence of Almighty God. Here humanity blos- 
soms in perfection and yields its fruit without 
taint of sin. And wherever, amid earth's millions, 
the pollen of that divine life, all tincture in its 
vitalizing power, shall fall upon a human heart, 
something of the goodness and the loveliness and 
the glory of the Christ shall be seen. 

II 

The risen Christ has power to impart to his 
disciples his own joy in the midst of the sorrows 
and burdens of life. This was what he meant when 
he said that he would leave his joy with his 
friends, and that no man would be able to take 
that joy away from them. 

In the biography of Champness, a famous 
English preacher, the story is told that when he 
was a boy of fourteen years he made a plan to see 
the football game between two rival teams. The 
month was August, the day was hot ; but by ten 
o'clock in the morning the youth had completed 
his Saturday's task. Going to his father he made 
the report and asked permission and money for 
the football game. The father said, quietly, that 



166 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

he had planned for the boy to take a package to a 
merchant in Manchester. In a moment the boy's 
hopes fell. In that household the rule was instant 
obedience. A half hour later the size of the pack- 
age staggered the boy. It was almost as big as him- 
self. Every moment it grew heavier and the day 
hotter. By easy stages the boy went slowly on, 
until the tramcar put him down at the other end of 
Manchester. Going into the store, he threw the 
bundle down on the papermakcr's counter, and, 
hot and tired, turned away, with quivering chin 
and dim eyes, for his disappointment was very, 
very sore. A little later he started toward the 
door to take the tramcar home. Then the mer- 
chant called after him that there was an answer. 
He weighed the bundle, saying, "We will get some 
good linen paper out of this package/' and then 
counted out the money for him. "Your father's 
letter says I am to give you this money to spend at 
the football game." With a bound the boy was 
back at the counter, with eyes shining like stars. 
Now, how light the bundle seemed ! "O my !" he 
exclaimed. "I wish it had been four times as 
big!" 

At last he understood, for the football field was 
at this end of Manchester. But his father had 
tested his obedience and concealed the great 
reward. Newell Dwight Hillis says that this is 
what God is always doing when he lays any duty 



THE CHRIST TINCTURE IN HUMAN LIFE 167 

upon Christ's disciples. Christ imposes a yoke — 
yes, but the dry wood in that yoke ripens clusters 
for strength. Christ does impose a burden, but 
all of his weights soon turn to wings. This is a 
great message for us- to learn this Easter morning. 
Are the burdens of life heavy ? Then Easter tells 
us that though our burdens seem as great as the 
stone at the mouth of the sepulcher in Joseph's 
garden seemed to the women who came in loving 
tenderness to perfume the body of Jesus, there are 
angels of help and blessing for the friends of 
Jesus. There are no burdens too heavy on Easter 
day, for the heavier the burden we carry for 
Christ's dear sake, the greater the joy and the 
greater the glory of the reward. 

Ill 

The risen Christ has power to impart to us 
his own fearlessness of death and his own sublime 
confidence in the eternal life. Death was no more 
to Jesus Christ than the passing from one room into 
another. He took upon himself our earthly house 
out of love for us, and he went back again into the 
heavenly house to be our Friend forever at the 
right hand of God. And this confidence about 
heaven and immortality which breathes as an 
atmosphere in the presence of Jesus he imparts 
to those who love and trust him. My dear old 
friend, Dr. Daniel Steele, a saint who is still liv- 



168 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

ing in Boston, recently wrote an article in which 
he said that he was daily in. expectation of step- 
ping into heaven, and therefore it was natural for 
him to lay aside, as far as possible, the earthly 
metaphors and to take hold of the reality, of which 
these are poor pictures. Standing at the thresh- 
old of heaven, he finds that he can without loss 
eliminate the jeweled walls, the gates of pearl, the 
glassy sea, the river of life, the harps of gold, the 
rainbow round about the throne, the streets of 
gold, and the material mansion. But he finds that 
he would like to retain the personal element, the 
angels, and the spirits of the just made perfect, 
among whom are those whom he had "loved long 
since and lost awhile" ; but even they do not con- 
stitute for him the greatest attraction of heaven. 
The real heaven for him is in two words — "With 
Christ." And that was Paul's heaven. He re- 
joiced that if he were absent from the body, he 
would be "with Christ," which was far better. 

Some of you who hear me this morning are in 
the midst of the tenderness of the first Easter 
time after a great sorrow. I thank God that for 
you the day may take the sting of bitterness 
out of your grief. Death is not the end of our 
loved ones whom God has called home. Easter 
morning with the ever-living Christ tells us that 
it is only life in another room of our Father's 
house, a nobler, sweeter life into which they have 



THE CHRIST TINCTURE IN HUMAN LIFE 169 

entered, and where, after a little, we shall join 
them in eternal reunion. A friend sent me the 
other day through the mail a little poem about 
"The Rose Beyond the Wall." I do not know who 
wrote it, but there is a vision in it that ought to 
comfort our hearts this Easter day. 

Near shady wall a rose once grew, 
Budded and blossomed in God's free light, 

Watered and fed by morning dew, 

Shedding its sweetness day and night. 

As it grew and blossomed fair and tall, 

Slowly rising to loftier height, 
It came to a crevice in the wall, 

Through which there shone a beam of light. 

Onward it crept with added strength, 
With never a thought of fear or pride, 

And it followed the light through the crevice length, 
And unfolded itself on the other side. 

The light, the dew, the broadening view, 
Were found the same as they were before. 

It lost itself in beauties new, 
Breathing its fragrance more and more. 

Shall claim of death cause us to grieve, 
And make our courage faint or fall? 

Nay, let us faith and hope receive — 
The rose still grows beyond the wall, 

Scattering fragrance far and wide, 

Just as it did in days of yore; 
Just as it did on the other side; 

Just as it will, forevermore 



CHAPTER XIII 

The Bird in Thy Bosom 

That good thing which was committed unto thee 
guard.— 2 Tim. 1. U (Am. Rev. Yer.). 

I have been reading recently a very interest- 
ing discussion which has been going on in cer- 
tain literary circles in England as to the meaning 
of a paragraph spoken by one of the characters in 
Sir Walter Scott's novel, "The Abbot." In that 
story Scott makes Magdalen Graeme say to her 
grandson: "Thou hast kept well the bird in thy 
bosom. As a boy, as a youth, thou hast held fast 
the faith amongst heretics — thou hast kept thy 
secret and mine own amongst thine enemies. . . . 
Down, down on thy knees before the holy sign, 
which evil men injure and blaspheme — down, and 
praise saints and angels for the grace they have 
done thee, in preserving thee from the leprous 
plague which cleaves to the house in which thou 
wert nurtured." 

Scott adds an explanatory note to the phrase 
"the bird in thy bosom," in which he tells us that 
it is an expression used by Sir Ralph Percy, slain 
in the battle of Hedgely Moor, in 1464, when 
dying, to express his having preserved unstained 
his fidelity to the House of Lancaster. 

The discussion which has been going on is to 
170 



THE BIRD IN THY BOSOM 



171 



find out the meaning of Magdalen Graeme when 
she used this sentence to her grandson. With that 
discussion we do not need to go further at this 
time. But the striking phrase, "the bird in thy 
bosom/' clung to my mind and kept revolving 
until it found its counterpart in the words of 
Paul to Timothy which I have quoted for our 
text. Whatever Magdalen Graeme might have 
meant, or whatever might have been the exact 
thought in the mind of Paul, I am sure that we 
must all agree that the noblest treasure which has 
been committed to us, and the one which it is of 
most importance that we guard, is the soul. In 
an old book entitled "Marius, the Epicurean/' 
there is a paragraph which tells the story of a boy, 
in which it is said that "one by one, at the desire 
of his mother, the lad broke down his cherished 
traps and springs for the hungry wild birds on 
the salt marsh. 'A white bird,' she told him 
once, looking at him gravely, 'a bird which he must 
carry in bis bosom across a crowded public place — 
his own soul — was like that.' Would it reach the 
hands of his good genius on the opposite side 
unruffled and unsoiled ?" 

In the Book of the Dead the ancient Egyptians 
represent the soul as a bird escaping from man's 
body at death. The soul in the sense in which I 
wish to study it may well be defined as "the bird 
in the bosom," which ever soars and seeks the 



172 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

things that are highest and best — as that which 
"singeth low in every heart" — the spirit which 
refuses to be subdued by all the seeming victories 
of evil, which knows the right will conquer and 
declines to ally itself with the powers of darkness. 
And "keeping" the bird in the bosom is the same 
thing as not being "disobedient unto the heavenly 
vision/' but remaining true to the noblest ideals 
of youth. 

I 

We have here, I am sure, a great and beautiful 
theme. To guard our own souls does not mean 
simply to be good. It does not mean simply not 
to do wrong. It means something infinitely more. 
This "good thing" which Paul says was committed 
to Timothy, this bird in your bosom and mine, 
above all else means the individual soul with all 
its possibilities of noble career and achievement 
which is within the reach of each one of us. This 
it is which we must guard, or lose our own souls. 
Newell Dwight Hillis, in a recent address on 
Browning's "Andrea del Sarto," brings out with 
graphic clearness the poet's great picture of an 
artist who ought to have been among the immor- 
tals, but who failed because a worldly, earth- 
clinging wife drew him away from his ideals. 
There is in all literature no better illustration of 
our theme. At twenty Andrea was the hero of 
Florence; his father was a poor tailor, but the 



THE BIRD IN THY BOSOM 173 

young artist carried all his earnings home to buy 
ease for his mother and honor for his idolized 
father. The youth was handsome, with bright eyes 
and quick wit. Laughter was always bubbling 
upon his lips; he was open and frank, and the 
proverb was that Andrea carried sunshine with 
him. He had the genius for hard work also, 
lingered long over the other masters, was up early 
to catch the tints and bright colors of the morning. 
He never tired of sketching faces, bright garments, 
brilliant scenes in garden, cloud, and sky. Then 
the change came. A selfish, wicked woman crossed 
his path, and he loved her. She was a bold, bril- 
liant woman, imperious, pleasure-loving, and 
utterly selfish. She had grown like a scarlet poppy 
in life's wheatfield. She spoiled Andrea of his 
soul, as Cleopatra ruined Antony. She burned the 
idealism out of his life. 

Nothing could be more pathetic than their last 
talk together before he died. Andrea says to her : 
"For you do know, Lucrezia, as God lives, that one 
day Michael Angelo said to Raphael, when the 
two were working on tihe palace walls in Rome: 
'Friend, there is a certain young painter dwelling 
in our Florence who, were he given power to 
decorate a ceiling and adorn a wall, supported by 
princes and urged on by popes and kings, as you 
are, would bring the sweat upon that brow of yours, 
and put your gift to the utmost stretch.' Michael 



174 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

Angelo said these words; Michael Angelo said 
them to Raphael. And I might have kept my place 
beside them, lifted my paintings just as high, had 
yon lived in the heights and called me up, and had 
I gone home to your heart. God gave you a per- 
fect brow and perfect eyes and more than perfect 
mouth. Had you, with that sweet pure voice, that 
my soul hears, as a bird the fowler's pipe, called 
me upward unto God, instead of downward to the 
fowler's snare ; had you brought the mind, as some 
women do, and urged God and the glory, never 
cared for gain, the present by the future, lived for 
fame, climbed side by side with Michael Angelo, 
remember Raphael is waiting, and urge yourself 
up, struggle up to God, Michael Angelo, Raphael, 
Andrea, all three — why, Lucrezia, I might have 
done it." He had lost the bird out of his bosom — 
he had lost his soul. 

1. The soul is kept only through work and 
struggle and effort in achievement. There is a 
profound truth in that hymn by Anne Bronte, 
written out of her own experience: 

Believe not those who say 

The upward path is smooth, 
Lest thou shouldst stumble in the way 

And faint before the truth. 

It is the only road 

Unto the realms of joy; 
But he who seeks that blest abode 

Must all his powers employ. 



THE BIRD IN THY BOSOM 



175 



Arm — arm thee for the fight! 

Cast useless loads away; 
Watch through the darkest hours of night; 

Toil through the hottest day. 

To labor and to love, 

To pardon and endure, 
To lift thy heart to God above, 

And keep thy conscience pure, 

Be this thy constant aim, 

Thy hope, thy chief delight; 
What matter who should whisper blame 

Or who should scorn or slight, 

If but thy God approve, 

And if, within thy breast, 
Thou feel the comfort of his love, 

The earnest of his rest? 

2. If we are really to keep our souls, we must 
truly live. A soul may be frozen, may be smoth- 
ered, until it ceases to be vital. Emerson tells us 
that he once heard a preacher who sorely tempted 
him to say he would go to church no more. 
Writing of it he says : "A snowstorm was falling 
around us. The snowstorm was real, the preacher 
merely spectral, and the eye felt the sad contrast 
in looking at him, and then out of the window 
behind him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow. 
He had lived in vain. He had no one word intimat- 
ing that he had laughed, or wept, was married or in 
love, had been commended, or cheated, or cha- 
grined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were 
none the wiser for it. The capital secret of his 



176 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

profession, namely, to convert life into truth, lie 
had not learned." But alas ! it is not only an 
occasional preacher who loses the soul out of him 
by becoming simply an official instead of a man. 
These dead and dying people with big fat bodies, 
who bulk large in physical prosperity, are on 
every hand — the body strong and prosperous, but 
the soul smothered or dying or dead. 

3. The real joy of life comes only to men and 
women who keep and guard the soul through 
struggle and effort and noble achievement. Such 
souls find their joy in their great service. So 
great is their joy that they are never willing to 
drop their work. You see the great painter dying 
with the brush in his hand. You see the great 
preacher and winner of souls, like John Wesley 
or General Booth, carrying his work right on 
through old age, never dreaming of retirement 
until God sends death, as the shepherd dog, to 
bring him home. In such men the soul grows 
mightier with the years, and they are ever famous 
for the joy of their lives. Dr. Jowett says that we 
can never drift into joy; that the people who are 
strangers to joy are the people who shirk every 
difficulty and never contend with a troublesome 
task. It requires a little pressure even to get the 
juice out of a grape, and it is certain that the 
fine juices of life are tasted only where there is 
a certain stress and strain, a certain pressure, a 



THE BIRD IN THY BOSOM 



177 



certain sense of burden and task. Luther was 
plunged into a sea of trouble, yet the laughter of 
Luther was notoriously boisterous. Sir Alfred 
Lyle in his biography of Lord Tennyson says 
that the laughter of Tennyson was triumphant, 
and yet it was Tennyson who wrote "In Me- 
moriam." True joy is not a mere escape from 
trial and struggle and sorrow. It is the victory 
over them, or through them, which crowns the 
soul and gives it a sense of dignity and glory. 

No doubt many of you saw Henry Drummond 
on his visit to America, and others of you have 
read something of his saintly life, and remember 
how, after a noble life of service for the Master, 
he was called at the last to endure a long and 
trying illness. Many friends came to try and 
comfort him, but t they found it a hard task, for 
he was always the brightest person in the room. 
It ever ended in those who came to comfort going 
away comforted themselves. He had kept the bird 
in his bosom and on the last day of his life repeated 
those glorious lines: 

I'm not ashamed to own my Lord, 

Or to defend his cause; 
Maintain the honor of his Word, 

The glory of his cross. 

II 

One of the favorite suggestions maintained by 
many literary people in the discussion referred 



178 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

to in the opening of this sermon as affording an 
explanation of the phrase "the bird in thy bosom/' 
was that it referred to a happening that was not 
uncommon in the days of falconry. Scott's book, 
"The Abbot," has in it a great deal about falconry, 
and it often occurred when birds were being cap- 
tured by the use of the falcon that a bird pur- 
sued would fly into the bosom of a man or woman 
for protection from the pursuing hawk, and often 
the person thus fled to for a refuge would hide the 
fleeing bird in his bosom, and keep it safe there 
until he returned home, and then set it at liberty 
in safety. Whatever may have been the original 
meaning of the phrase, it is certainly true that 
there is no surer way to keep our own souls and 
guard them securely than to use our strength as a 
cloak for the weak and pursued and helpless. Rat- 
tenbury, one of the passionate young English 
preachers, recently said, "The saved man is the 
saving man." You are not saved simply because 
you are unwilling to go to hell ; a much better sign 
of the saved man is his willingness to go to hell 
to fetch somebody else back. Moses was saved 
when he was willing to allow his name to be 
blotted out of God's book in behalf of his com- 
rades, and Paul was saved when he was willing 
to become anathema for his brethren's sake. Let 
us be sure that the truest way to strengthen our 
own souls is to hide in our bosoms the weak and 



THE BIRD IN THY BOSOM 



179 



wounded birds that have been frightened and 
crippled by the sorrows of life. Edward Fitz- 
Gerald, in one of his beautiful letters to Mrs. 
Kemble, speaks about that oft-quoted stanza of 
Eobert Burns: 

Ye banks and braes o' bonny Doon, 

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair? 
How can ye chant, ye little birds, 

And I sae weary fu' o' care? 
Thou'lt break my heart, thou warbling bird, 

That wantons through the flowering thorn; 
Thou minds me o* departed joys 

Departed — never to return. 

After quoting this poem, FitzGerald tells Mrs. 
Kemble how a friend had related to him that he 
had one day started outside the coach passing 
through the Burns country, in company with a poor 
woman who had just lost husband and child. She 
talked of her loss and sorrow with some resigna- 
tion till the coach happened to pull up by a road- 
side inn. A little bird was singing somewhere; 
the poor woman then broke into tears and said, 
"I could bear anything but that." 

The song of the little bird overcame Burns 
and the poor woman who had just lost her dearest, 
because its gladness seemed to mock their sorrow. 
Nothing can comfort us at such a time save the 
consciousness that God's love is in our sorrow as 
well as in the joy of the bird, and it is for us to 
seek on every opportunity to make this love of 



180 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

God, through Jesus Christ, real to those who are 
weak or in trouble. 

Adelaide Procter tells the story of a young girl 
who lived centuries ago in a convent in France. 
She was sweet and pure and admired of all who 
saw her. Her work was to care for the Altar of 
Mary and answer the portal. Wars swept over 
France and brought the soldiers to the convent, 
and one that was wounded was given into her 
care. When he recovered he persuaded her to 
leave the convent. She went with him to Paris, 
where she lost her good name and everything that 
made life worth living. 

Years passed, and she came back to die within 
sound of the convent bell. She fell fainting 
upon the steps, and there came to find her, not 
such a one as she had been, young and fair, but 
such a one as she would have been, a pure and 
noble matron. This woman picked her up and 
carried her into the convent, and placed her on 
her bed. All the years she had been gone this 
loyal friend had faithfully done her work as well 
as her own, and none knew of her disgrace ; so 
when the poor, crippled bird was strong again she 
glided into her old place, and until the day of 
her death no one ever knew her sin. Could any 
woman better guard the bird in her bosom than 
with deeds like that ? 

Edwin Markham has a little song which ought 



THE BIRD IN THY BOSOM 181 

to leave our theme sculptured in our thoughts. 
The poem tells the story of an old shoemaker who 
was expecting the Lord to appear to him in his 
shop: 

While the cobbler mused, there passed his pane 
A beggar drenched by the driving rain; 
He called him in from the stony street 
And gave him shoes for his bruised feet. 
The beggar went; there came a crone, 
Her face with wrinkles of sorrow sown; 
A bundle of fagots bowed her back, 
And she was spent with the wrench and rack. 
He gave her his loaf and steadied her load 
As she took her way on the weary road. 
Then to his door came a little child, 
Lost and afraid in the world so wild, 
In the big dark world. Catching it up, 
He gave it the milk in the waiting cup, 
And led it home to its mother's arms, 
Out of the reach of the world's alarms. 
The day went down in the crimson west, 
And with it the hope of the blessed Guest; 
And Conrad sighed as the world turned gray: 
"Why is it, Lord, that your feet delay? 
Did you forget that this was the day?" 
Then, soft, in the silence a voice he heard: 
"Lift up your heart, for I kept my word. 
Three times I came to your friendly door; 
Three times my shadow was on your floor, 
I was the beggar with bruised feet; 
I was the woman you gave to eat; 
I was the child on the homeless street." 



CHAPTEK XIV 

The Man Who Is the Garment of God 

The Spirit of the Lord clothed itself with Gideon. — 
Judg. 6. 34. 

This is the true rendering of this verse, 
though we have to go into the margin to get it. 
It expresses the exact meaning in our modern 
language. In the text it stands, "The Spirit of 
the Lord eame upon Gideon," but in the margin 
there is this alternative which expresses in a clear 
and forceful way the thought meant to be con- 
veyed — that in executing his great purposes God 
clothes himself with men, uses them as his apparel 
when he goes forth to battle for righteousness in 
the world. Israel is in a bad way. The altars 
have been pulled down and the idols stand on 
every high hill. God purposes the redemption of 
his people, but he sends his angel out to find a man, 
a man who is worth while, who has the character- 
istics God can use, and he will clothe himself with 
this man, and through his trumpet arouse the 
people to heroism and to go forth to overthrow 
the Midianites. 

I 

The first great thought of our theme is that 
God needs men. We are accustomed to say that 

182 



THE MAN WHO IS THE GARMENT OF GOD 183 

man can do nothing without God, and the idea is 
not quite so sure in our thought that God will 
do nothing without us. Some one has said, speak- 
ing of Moses and his career, that he was the man, 
and no other would do. In mind and heart, by 
education of the palace and the desert, he had 
been trained and fitted for his great work, and 
no one else could do it. Certainly a most impres- 
sive dialogue is that which took place beside the 
burning bush on the slopes of Mount Horeb 
between a commanding and persuading God and 
a shrinking and fearful man. Here is the Most 
High, who can lay Pharaoh's pride in the dust 
with a touch of his hand, yet he waits and pleads, 
and reasons with, assures and reassures, and 
almost drives this reluctant shepherd to the front. 
It illustrates the universal lesson of all history, 
the lesson of the incarnation, that humanity is 
to be redeemed through man. John Wesley's 
saying has been often quoted, that "God buries 
his workmen but carries on his work." That is 
true, but we must not forget that he continues 
to carry it on by the hands of other workmen. I 
am sure the Scriptures will bear us out in the 
statement t!hat God often waits for men who are 
fit to be his messengers, with whom he can clothe 
himself to go forth to the world's blessing. 

Joseph goes down into Egypt a dreaming lad, 
and through slavery and dungeon and trying 



184 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

experiences he is developed into a man whom God 
can set in high places to carry on a great work. 
Daniel is caught up as a boy by an invading army 
and carried away into exile to live his life in a 
foreign land and to be taught in strange new 
schools lessons that bring out a peculiar manhood 
which makes him the garment of God among a 
heathen people. David, the shepherd lad, through 
struggles with wild beasts and still fiercer men, 
and humiliating persecution, comes to be the 
singer and the warrior as well as the king of 
Israel. And so you may go through history and 
the men stand out who, in their day and place, 
have wrought mightily for the uplift of man, 
for the honor of righteousness in the earth — men 
like Luther, and Wesley, and Washington, and 
Lincoln, and Roosevelt; men for whom the world 
seems to have waited for some great leadership 
toward righteousness and human progress, that 
God might do his will among men. 

II 

This is the noblest dignity of man, that he may 
be the clothing of God. Men have done wonder- 
ful things in the world. They have dived into the 
depths of the sea, and have made maps of the 
great deep, and can tell the story of the ocean bed. 
They have invented eyes by which they can see 
into the blue vault of the sky and trace the flight 



THE MAN WHO IS THE GARMENT OF GOD 185 



of far-off worlds. They have tracked the stars 
and discovered the secrets of wandering comets, 
as well as sun and planet. They have plunged 
into the world of mystery and come back with the 
proofs concerning light and heat. They have 
studied the tongues of nearly all the tribes of 
men and reduced them to law and order and put 
them into type and book. Man has so quickened 
his intelligence that he can hear across the earth 
and speak under the sea, or above it, from conti- 
nent to continent. He has so conquered nature 
that he can make the mountain waterfall light 
his cities and drive his trains in city or country. 
He makes the steam drive his ships and combine 
with the viewless ether to give flight to airy vessels 
in the sky. Science bears witness to the grandeur 
of man. Art bears silent testimony to his won- 
drous genius. Literature speaks of man's great- 
ness. All this is wonderful and tells of man's 
dignity 'and nobility, his high position in the 
universe. But all these are as nothing compared 
to the fact that a man may be the vesture of God ! 
a man may be the garment of the Almighty! 
There is no greater thought concerning man than 
the one expressed in our text, that God goes forth 
into the earth clothed in a man! If it is a high 
honor to be a scientist, if it is a great thing to 
be an inventor, if it is a noble thing to be a 
creator of literature, what shall we say it is to 



186 THE GEEAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

be filled with God? — to live in the midst of our 
common life as the clothing of the Divine Spirit, 
thrilled by his presence and guided and inspired 
by him who is light and love and wisdom ? 

Ill 

~Now> God is no respecter of persons, and he is 
the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. If he 
clothed himself with Gideon, then I am sure that 
he will clothe himself with any man like Gideon. 
What are the characteristics of Gideon? 

1. In the first place, Gideon was simple- 
hearted and straightforward — a clean man, full 
of honest purpose. That he was a poor man 
and a farmer was only an incident and amounted 
to nothing. He was a frank, honest, clean soul, 
and, my friend, that is what counts in the sight 
of God. The amount of money you have, the kind 
of house you live in, the accidents of fortune, or 
birth, are very insignificant compared to the char- 
acter of your mind and heart. As J ames Orr, 
the Scotch preacher, says, the mind is its own 
place and may become to its possessor a palace 
or a prison. You enter one soul: it is a foul, 
contracted, base, poison-laden chamber, the inlets 
through which one might enter into it are choked 
up; its recesses are hiding-places for iniquity; 
what once bore traces of beauty about it is broken 
down and defaced. You enter another soul: it 



THE MAN WHO IS THE GARMENT OF GOD 18? 

is a broad and spacious habitation. There is a 
lofty and noble outlook toward heaven and upon 
earth. Each room is richly stored and adorned 
with things beautiful and pleasant; knowledge 
and art and religion have lent their best to invest 
it with dignity and splendor. The sunlight of 
God's favor shines in it; the blessings of good 
men are its music. What makes this marvelous 
difference ? The answer is very simple. Nothing 
can make a soul ignoble but the harboring of 
ignoble thoughts, the choice of ignoble ends, the 
preferring of ignoble companionships, the indulg- 
ing of ignoble lusts, and the following of low pur- 
suits. Poverty does not make a soul ignoble ; mis- 
fortune does not make a soul coarse ; the reproach 
or the obloquy of men which may be incurred in a 
good cause does not degrade a soul. Nothing can 
make a soul ignoble but what it is, and what it 
makes itself by turning aside to the paths of evil. 
We read of fishes that have lived so long in dark 
caves that they have lost the power of seeing. It has 
left them. The eyesockets are there, but no sight. 
And so souls may mind earthly things so long that 
the very power of thinking things pure and noble 
and divine departs from them. If we would be 
the proper vesture of God, we must, like Gideon, 
aspire after truth and seek in our place, however 
limited it may be, to find the light. Such souls 
expand ; they become vast, wide, high-domed, 



188 THE GEE AT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

many-chambered, beautiful, a place where God 
may dwell and give glory and guidance. 

2. Another characteristic of Gideon was his 
worshipful spirit. He was a reverent, pure- 
hearted, worshipful man. I have read recently 
that there is a movement on foot to cleanse the 
Thames, the famous river that runs through the 
city of London. The Thames used to be called, in 
the rimes of the poets of Queen Elizabeth's time, 
"The Silver Thames." The swans glided between 
London Bridge and Westminster, and the silvery 
salmon haunted the river from the sea to its 
source. There are no swans to-day between West- 
minster and London Bridge, and no silvery sal- 
mon. The river is brown with the mud that is 
stirred up from its bottom, and the foul streams 
that flow into it. Yet the Thames, we are told, 
is being purified, and some day the salmon may 
return and the swans reappear. So the heart 
must be cleansed from the filth of worldliness if 
God shall come into it to dwell there. To keep 
the heart pure and fit for God's dwelling we must, 
like Gideon, retain the worshipful, reverent spirit 
through thinking about holy things and commun- 
ing with heaven. 

IV 

If our hearts are kept through his grace, fitted 
for his dwelling, God will clothe himself with us 
and give us power. See what happened when he 



THE MAN WHO IS THE GARMENT OF GOD 189 



clothed himself with Gideon. Nothing could 
stand before him. With his little band of three 
hundred unselfish heroes, he was more than a 
match for the great army of the Midianites. The 
illustrations are everywhere. See Peter, the 
weak, cowardly Peter, who denied his Lord at the 
accusation of a servant girl. But see him a few 
weeks later, when through humility and repent- 
ance he has cleansed his soul so that he becomes 
the garment of God, and he stands up to preach 
at Pentecost, and three thousand men are con- 
verted. See Moody, a very common, stammering 
man, whom nobody wanted to hear, but he 
cleansed his hands in innocency, he purged his 
soul with repentance and prayer, he gave himself 
to service in behalf of God's poor, and after a 
while he was fit, and God came in and clothed 
himself with Moody, and hundreds of thousands 
were led to Christ by that marvelous evangel. 
my friends, are our hearts cleansed and fit to be 
the garments of God ? The world needs our 
power, the church needs our power, and yet we 
are so weak and so helpless. O Spirit of God, 
cleanse us, purify us, humble us, that thou mayest 
clothe thyself with us, that we may minister to 
the world's needs ! 

If God dwells in us and we are his gar- 
ments, then we shall be filled and sustained with 
hope of victory. In a gallery in Venice there is 



190 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

a picture which reveals a spacious and peaceful 
Italian landscape, with the Master and a group 
of saints in the foreground. Saint Catherine of 
Siena, in the black and white garb of a Domini- 
can nun, kneels at the feet of Jesus, who places 
on her brow the crown of thorns. In his other 
hand he holds a golden crown, which is to be the 
reward of faithful endurance. The golden crown 
is held where Saint Catherine could not lift her 
eyes to the face of J esus without seeing it. That 
picture was the artist Bissolo's way of preaching 
to a timid, fearful world the comforting gospel 
that if we suffer with Jesus we shall also reign 
with him. And the closer we get to Christ, the 
richer our certainty of heavenly triumph. Phil- 
lips Brooks says that it is a beautiful conviction, 
one whose mysterious beauty we are always learn- 
ing more and more, that the deeper our spiritual 
experience of Christ becomes, the more our soul's 
life really hangs on his life as its Saviour and 
continual Friend, the more real becomes to us 
the unquenched life of our dear ones who have 
gone from us to be with him. In those moments 
when Christ is most real to me, when he lives in 
the center of my desires, and I am resting most 
heavily upon his help — in those moments I am 
surest that the dead are not lost ; that those whom 
this Christ, in whom I trust, has taken, he is 
keeping. The more he lives to me, the more 



THE MAX WHO IS THE GARMENT OF GOB 191 

they live. If the city of our heart is holy with 
the presence of a living Christ, then the dear 
dead will come to us, and we shall know they are 
not dead but living, and bless him who has been 
their Redeemer, and rejoice in the work that they 
are doing for him in his perfect world, and press 
#n joyously toward our own redemption, not fear- 
ing even the grave, since by its side stands him 
whom we know and love, who has the "keys 
of death and of hell." 

V 

But I do not dare close this study without a 
word to some of you who, through your indiffer- 
ence and neglect, and your sin, have shut God 
out of your hearts and away from the control of 
your lives. You have been brought up in such a 
way that you have never been entirely beyond the 
influences of Christianity. It may seem to you 
that you are not far from the kingdom of God. 
It may be that you are not far, my friend; but 
your face is set the wrong way. An American 
who was traveling in Ireland wanted to go to 
the town of Derry, and did not seem to be com- 
ing to the town as soon as he thought he ought, 
so, meeting a native on the road, he said, "Am I 
on the right road for Derry?" "Yes, sor," was 
the reply ; "sure enough you are on the right road 
for Derry if you turn your face the other way!" 



192 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

That would be abundantly true of the lives of 
some of you in regard to the salvation of your 
souls. 

The one hopeful, glorious thing is that God 
wants to come into you and clothe himself with 
your personality. You have all seen some copy 
of Holman Hunt's great picture, "The Light of 
the World." You remember the picture. You 
have seen the door at which Jesus is knocking. 
The ivy is clinging to the door and weeds have 
grown up about it. The poisonous belladonna 
plant grows there. The artist seems to have 
intended to tell us that it is a cold night, the stars 
are shining clearly, and there at that neglected 
door, in the coldness of the night, stands the 
radiant figure of Jesus Christ. The night is 
illuminated by his presence. It is a splendid, 
kingly figure which stands there knocking and 
asking for entrance. It is the King of kings, who 
put aside the riches and glory of heaven and came 
down to earth and suffered and died for our 
redemption, who rose from the dead, having con- 
quered the grave, and who now reigns in heaven, 
who comes back and knocks at the door of our 
hearts. He could break down the door and force 
his way, but he will not do that. He is a Sup- 
pliant, a Lover ; he waits and gently knocks for 
admittance. "Behold, I stand at the door and 
knock !" That is what he says to us. 



THE MAN WHO IS THE GARMENT OF GOD 193 

Old Christmas Evans gives a wonderful de- 
scription of the knocking of Jesus. He is described 
there in the heat of the sun, and the cold of the 
winter, and when the snow falls and the winds 
are biting, there stands the patient Christ. The 
seasons come and go, and there he stands, still 
knocking. Nothing prevents his standing there, 
prevents his knocking right through the years, 
and as they come and go, the lonely figure of the 
King of kings may be seen knocking. O my 
friend, there he stands to-day at the door of your 
heart. Will you open the door and let him in? 



CHAPTEE XV 

The Vision and the Temple 

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord 
sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train 
filled the temple. — Isa. 6. 1. 

This was the inaugural vision of Isaiah. That 
vision made a prophet, the greatest prophet of 
the Old Testament times! The greatest thing 
that happened that year was not that a famous 
king like Uzziah passed away, but that a young- 
man like Isaiah had a vision of God that made his 
splendid career possible. There have been plenty 
of kings, but you can count the great prophets 
on your fingers. We can get along even without 
kings, but the world soon goes to rack and ruin 
without prophets, men who, lifted head and shoul- 
ders above the level, catch visions of God and 
duty and privilege for humanity, that makes them 
leaders of their age and the uplifters of mankind. 
The world could have better lost a thousand 
Uzziahs than have failed of one Isaiah. On the 
day that George III of England was born a young 
Oxford student on a quiet street in London, in 
a little meeting of scholarly youth, "believed to 
the saving of the soul," and obtained assurance 
of sins forgiven. It was as notable an event for 
the world as the vision of Isaiah. The birth of 

194 



THE VISION AND THE TEMPLE 195 

George III was trumpeted to the whole earth, 
but the conversion of John Wesley was not 
thought of much account. ISTow the name of 
George III is comparatively insignificant, while 
that of John Wesley becomes more glorious 
every year, and the influence of his work, 
inspired by the vision that came to him in that 
quiet prayer meeting of students, reaches round 
the globe and inspires men in every nation of 
the earth. 

Vision and life always go together. "Where 
there is no vision the people perish," says the 
Word of God. If we are to truly grasp our 
theme, we must get real hold of the essence of 
this great vision which made Isaiah a prophet 
of the Most High. The essence of the vision is 
in this, that for the first time Isaiah beheld the 
entire temple filled with the train of the 
Almighty, the presence of God everywhere in it. 
He had been accustomed to think about the temple 
as a building separated into various rooms, vary- 
ing very greatly as to sanctity. There were places 
in the temple where the Gentiles were allowed 
to come. These were very common courts. There 
were other rooms into which a Gentile might 
not go on the peril of his life. But there was only 
one room, and that was a veiled and silent cham- 
ber, where the pious Jew hoped to find the pres- 
ence of the Almighty God. So you can see that 



196 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

when the young Isaiah, in his wonderful vision 
of God, beheld the entire temple, even the most 
common and secular portions — the places reserved 
for Gentile dogs, as they were often called — - 
filled with the train of God, in every portion 
from the outer limits to the inner sanctuary, it 
was a marvelous revelation, that was indeed a 
revolution in the mind and heart of this man. 
Now there is in this theme, I am sure, something 
worthy of our study. It should take away many 
of our ideas of the separate compartments into 
which our prejudices separate our lives. 

I 

In the first place, I think it ought to teach us 
that a man is a whole man, body and soul; that 
our human bodies are a sacred trusteeship com- 
mitted to us, just as truly as is the soul. Paul 
says the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. 
And man, as a whole, is the temple of God. It 
used to be believed that the center of all evil was 
in the human body, and there has come down to 
us a sort of contempt for the body which still 
clings to a good deal of our thought. But that is 
pagan and not Christian. Christ spent a very 
great part of his ministry in healing the bodies 
of men and women. He ministered to the blind, 
and to the deaf, and to the lame, and the feverish, 
and the palsied, and to poor lepers, showing us 



THE VISION AND THE TEMPLE 197 

that the body was sacred in his thought. A proper 
estimate of the body — that is, a proper considera- 
tion that it is a part of God's gift of manhood 
and womanhood to us, that it is the temple in 
which we are to live and to worship, in which 
we are to grow and develop character and per- 
sonality — is infinitely important. All the joys 
and sorrows of life, while we live in this world, 
are to work out their purposes for us in the body. 
All the good we are to do in the world, we are to 
do through the aid of the body. We cannot, 
therefore, afford to be careless about it. Rever- 
ently, in the fear of God, we should try to pro- 
tect our health and develop our strength, and 
maintain at the highest degree of excellence the 
characteristic forces of our bodies, so that they 
will be effective engines which we may employ 
for use by the personality which through God's 
grace we are building up within them. 

Because the body is only a temporary house 
and will, ere long, wear out in spite of all we can 
do, is no reason why we should be careless of it, 
but all the more reason that we should handle it 
with reverent and wise hands to get out of it the 
greatest possible service for God and humanity. 

II 

I think we ought to learn also from our theme 
that God is just as much interested in what 



198 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

we commonly call our secular work as he is in 
that which we ordinarily denominate as spiritual. 
This is the temple of conduct, and God's train 
should fill all the temple. A great deal of harm 
has come from men imagining that their lives 
were, somehow, separated into compartments, as 
was the old J ewish temple. Man thinks his Sun- 
day is, somehow, a separate room from his Sat- 
urday or his Monday. It is a sacred room, where 
the presence of God sometimes dwells between 
the cherubim, but Saturday and Monday, and the 
other common days of the week, are only a com- 
monplace, an unsanctified court, where he may 
cheat the Gentiles if he can. 

Now, that is not a Christian idea of life. 
Christ and Paul were constantly inspiring in men 
a recognition of the sacredness and worth of 
common life, and a consecration of the every- 
day toil. And it is only by so regarding our lives 
that they gather dignity and greatness. Soon 
after the Spanish-American War, when General 
Leonard Wood refused about ten times as much 
salary to leave his place in the army and his work 
in Cuba to go into commercial life, and said he 
must hurry back because there was yellow fever 
there that must be eradicated, he gave us a 
glimpse of this Christlike vision of the sanctity 
of the common, everyday life of mankind. Many 
men think yellow fever is a thing to run away 



THE VISION AND THE TEMPLE 199 

from ; but here was a man who did not run away 
from it, but ran back to it to put his brain and 
his skill to work to clean up that accursed island 
and to save the wretched thousands there who had 
already suffered so much from a pest that had 
wasted them for generations. Until that work 
was done no other service was attractive to this 
man. I don't ask what church a man like that 
belongs to, but I say that that is the real recog- 
nition of the sanctity of common life. 

Lyman Abbott says that when a flagman sees 
a little, toddling infant on the track — as one did 
the other day — and runs out at the hazard of his 
life, and catches the child, and flings it to one 
side, to be himself struck down, and broken, and 
bruised, and killed by the onrushing train, we 
do not ask whether he is a Protestant or Roman 
Catholic, a Jew or a Christian ; we simply say 
that that man did a Christian thing. He took 
up the cross and followed Christ, whether he had 
ever heard of Christ or not. For there are many 
who wear the cross of Christ on their bosoms and 
say, "We follow Christ," that are walking in the 
opposite direction ; and there are those who never 
saw Christ clearly, who wear the cross of Christ 
in their hearts and not on it, and, though they 
know it not, follow him. 

I am sure that a clear recognition of the sanc- 
tity of everyday life will give us the bigger men 



200 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

that we need in all departments of human life. 
Realize that God is interested in what kind of a 
carpenter you are, in the kind of cooking you do, 
in the character of the business you carry on, as 
much as he is in the communion vow you take, 
and it will make your whole character and person- 
ality expand. Such a conception will give us 
men and women too big to lie, or be mean, or 
cheat ; men whose common traffic in every common 
day shall know the presence of "the trailing 
garments of the Lord." 

John Elliott, perhaps our greatest American 
artist now living, the man who painted the ceiling 
for the Boston Public Library, where on a canvas 
fifty feet square he has represented the twenty 
Christian centuries as horses led by the hours ? 
winged female figures, out of the mists of the past 
into the illumination of the present, and who has 
more recently finished the "Diana of the Tides," 
which now covers the end wall of the right-hand 
gallery of the new National Museum at Wash- 
ington — a wonderful picture — has recently at- 
tracted great attention. But it is the man and his 
spirit rather than his pictures that I wish to inspire 
us. When he had just finished this last great 
picture in Rome, that terrible earthquake in 
Southern Italy came, and this artist, who was 
just touching the climax of his career, dropped 
his brush at the first call for volunteers and went 



THE VISION AND THE TEMPLE 201 

down to Messina to help. He did not care what, 
so he helped. Those are the only people who 
really help in this world. Actually, he played 
the part of stevedore for ten days on a relief ship. 
He wrote back to a friend, "I have dropped my 
last knuckle down the hold this morning, and I 
have only two fingers left that I can wash." When 
that sort of work was over they put him in charge 
of building the little houses that America con- 
tributed, and he put all his artistic skill and 
genius into making those houses beautiful, and 
gave himself to it with tireless persistence and 
joyous abandon as long as he could help. Now, 
my friends, this man, a writer tells us in one of 
the current magazines, "has an artistic tempera- 
ment." Now, if that is the artistic temperament, 
it is just the temperament every man and woman 
of us needs. It is not the temperament that is 
self-centered, whining, ineffectual. It is the tem- 
perament that does whatever comes to hand, as 
well as it can, for sheer love of the task and of 
beautiful workmanship ; that through imagination 
wins to sympathy, and through imagination grasps 
the opportunity to do practical work beautifully 
where others would only do it practically. It is 
the temperament eternally boyish and buoyant, 
which is on the side of sweetness and light. 

If we look at our work like that, how fresh 
and breezy and interesting and romantic it will 



202 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

become! and our souls will be able to find rest 
and peace amid the commonest experiences of 
every day. Some unknown singer must have felt 
this truth when he sang: 

When spurred by tasks unceasing or undone, 

You would seek rest afar, 
And cannot, though repose be rightly won, 

Rest where you are. 

Neglect the needless; sanctify the rest; 

Move without stress or jar; 
With quiet of a spirit self-possessed, 

Rest where you are. 

Not in event, restriction, or release, 

Not in scenes near or far, 
But in ourselves is restlessness or peace, 

Rest where you are. 

Where lives the soul, lives God; his day, his Word, 

No phantom mists need mar: 
His starry nights are tents of peace unfurled: 

Rest where you are. 

Ill 

Our theme leads us to the conclusion that all the 
world, and all our life in it, is filled with the 
train of the Almighty. It is all God's world, 
and our life is all under his care. This thought 
suggests some very helpful visions. 

1. It suggests that all truth is God's truth, 
whether it comes to us by way of the prophet's 
vision in the Old Bible, or by the apostles' inspi- 
ration through the New Testament, or by way of 



THE VISION AND THE TEMPLE 203 

the geologist's spade, or the naturalist's photo- 
graph, the telescope of the astronomer, or the 
laboratory of the chemist. There was a time when 
many good people were wonderfully scared when 
new truths were revealed in the strata of the 
earth, or through the careful peering into the 
mysteries of chemical life by the scientists; but 
such fear is dying out of the world, and it will 
soon die altogether. God has more than one Bible. 
He has the Bible which comes down to us on the 
printed page, but he has also his Bible that is 
written in rock by the fingers of the centuries. 
He has another Bible that he prints over again 
every springtime, that is written in green grass 
and waving trees and blossoming flowers. David 
wrote the Psalms for one Bible, and thrushes, and 
larks, and robins, and mocking birds, and nightin- 
gales sing the Psalms for another. All the worlds 
and all the Bibles are God's, and it is not correct 
to say that one kind of truth is a Bible truth, 
and another kind of truth is scientific truth, as 
though they were at war. All truth is truth, the 
utterance of Almighty God by the breath of his 
lips, or the touch of his hand, giving expression 
to the beauty and light and love of the divine 
nature. 

2. Such a conception teaches us also that sor- 
row and joy, victory and defeat are all a part of 
God's plan. His train fills the whole temple 



204 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

of life- If you have ever been in Antwerp, you 
must have noticed how every fifteen minutes the 
bells in the great tower ring out on the air their 
sweet notes in soft melody, which falls like a 
delicious rain of music, dropping from the 
heavens, as tender and as holy as the song of 
angels. Those quarter-hour chimes remind you 
of the "Golden Bells" about which Edgar Allan 
Poe exclaims: 

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! 
Through the balmy air of night 
How they ring out their delight! 
From the molten golden notes, 
And all in tune. 

But every full hour of those Antwerp bells, 
amid their shower of liquid notes of silver, there 
ring out the solemn strokes of the great bell, 
with iron tongue, deep and heavy; and these 
heavy tones fill you with a feeling of awe, and 
you remember the "Iron Bells" about which Poe 
writes : 

What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! 
In the silence of the night, 
How we shiver with affright 
At the melancholy menace of their tone! 
For every sound that floats 
From the rust within their throats 
Is a groan. 

And so as you listen, hour after hour, to the 
chimes, the tender melody of the smaller, sweeter 



THE VISION AND THE TEMPLE 205 

bells reminds you of the joys and gladness of 
life and the mercy and the love of God, and the 
deep, solemn undertones that come at each full 
hour speak to you of the tears and the struggles 
and the sorrows of life, and the justice and judg- 
ment of God, and you come to feel that they are 
all a part of the same great harmony. And if we 
catch the vision of Isaiah with clear eyes, we shall 
come to know and feel that God has the same 
purpose for us in joy as in sorrow, in victory as 
in defeat. 

The cry of man's anguish went up unto God: 

"Lord, take away pain — 
The shadow that darkens the world thou hast made, 

The close-coiling chain 
That strangles the heart, the burden that weighs 

On the wings that would soar — 
Lord, take away pain from the world thou hast made, 

That it love thee the more!" 

Then answered the Lord to the cry of his world: 

"Shall I take away pain, 
And with it the power of the soul to endure, 

Made strong by the strain? 
Shall I take away pity, that knits heart to heart, 

And sacrifice high? 
Will ye lose all your heroes that lift from the fire 

White brows to the sky? 
Shall I take away love, that redeems with a price 

And smiles at its loss? 
Can ye spare from your lives, that would climb unto 
mine, 

The Christ on his cross?" 



CHAPTER XVI 



The Unrecognized Ministries of Life 

But he that was healed knew not who it was. — John 
5. 13 {Am. Rev. Ver.). 

This is one of the most picturesque of all the 
stories told about Jesus. It is at the Pool of 
Siloam, which was fed by a spring or fountain, 
and had a great reputation for the healing quality 
of its waters at certain times. The rumor was 
that an angel came down sometimes and troubled 
the waters, which is probably only the poetical 
way of telling that at certain seasons the water 
was far more strongly impregnated with medicinal 
virtues than at other times. Cripples were 
brought there and rheumatic people came from 
far and near. So popular was the place that 
some seemed to have had a long wait. This 
man, with whom we are concerned, had had an 
astounding wait of thirty-eight years. And when 
Jesus asks him about it he complains that he is 
not able to push his way when the water is in 
proper condition, having no one to help him, 
and at other times it is useless. Somehow there 
is something in this story which makes me sus- 
picious that this man must have gotten so accus- 
tomed to begging that he is like some other people 

206 



TILE UNRECOGNIZED MINISTRIES OF LIFE 207 

we have known, who would much prefer to beg 
with one arm than work with two. But it was 
not Christ's way to refuse compassion, even to the 
unworthy, so the Saviour said to him, "Arise, 
take up thy bed, and walk." It was like a shot 
out of a rifle, this voice of authority, and before 
he knew what he was doing, the man was on his 
feet, and his bed was on his back, and he was 
gone. 

Now, all this was on the Sabbath day, and the 
Pharisees, those great sticklers for propriety, got 
after him. He could lie there until he was dead, 
so far as they were concerned, and for all the 
help they w r ould give him, but he must not get well 
on the Sabbath. So they were anxious to get 
hold of the man who had healed him. But there 
he was unable to help them. Jesus had been 
unknown to him, and he had been so rejoiced over 
being made well that he had not even inquired 
his name. He was healed, that he knew, but who 
it was that healed him, he could not tell. For 
thirty-eight years he had lain by the side of the 
pool, where God sometimes ministered to men's 
bodies, and then there came by him the Incar- 
nation of God himself, and healed him, but he 
did not know that he had been in touch with the 
Divine. The ministry had been wrought, but he 
had not recognized from whence it came. It 
surely will not be without profit for us to note 



208 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



some of the methods of ministration by which 
God heals both the bodies and the souls of men, 
which are often unrecognized. 

I 

The outdoor, natural world of sky, and fields, 
and forests, and meadows, and pastures, green 
with foliage, often thus minister to us. They 
minister to our health, to the sanity of our minds 
and to the kindliness of our disposition. Nature, 
indeed, is not only God's great physician, but 
his most magnificent sanatorium. Wordsworth 
says: 

Nature never did betray 
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, 
Through all the years of this our life, to lead 
From joy to joy: for she can so inform 
The mind that is within us, so impress 
With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold 
Is full of blessings. 

In what seems to me the finest American poem 
printed during the past year, "The Song of the 
Stone Wall," by that wonderful blind, deaf, and 
dumb woman, Helen Keller, who has become one 
of the most interesting personalities in the world, 



THE UNRECOGNIZED MINISTRIES OF LIFE 209 

she paints a living, breathing picture of those 
hardy Pilgrims and Puritans who built the stone 
walls in New England. Nothing could be sweeter 
than her interpretation of the ministry of the 
spring-time beauty and glory to their longing 
hearts and ambitious souls: 

Beauty was at their feet, and their eyes beheld it; 
The earth cried out for labor, and they gave it. 
But ever, as they saw the budding spring, 
Ever as they cleared the stubborn field, 
Ever as they piled the heavy stones, 
In mystic visions they saw the eternal spring. 
They raised their hardened hands above the earth, 
And beheld the walls that are not built of stone, 
The portals opened by angels whose garments are of 
light; 

And above the radiant walls of living stones 

They dreamed vast meadows and hills of fadeless green. 

Literature abounds in this ministry of nature. 
In her "Fishin' Jimmie" Mrs. Slosson tells of a 
little French Canadian girl. Her mother was 
a tramp, and the girl had developed into a wild 
little heathen. The mother fell suddenly dead 
near the village, one day, and the child was found 
clinging to her mother's body. The girl's body 
and soul were shaken by bitter sobs, and when 
they tried to take her away she fought like a young 
wildcat. There was in the crowd a small boy 
who knew a saintly old man who was known as 
"Fishin' Jimmie," and he brought him to the 
spot. Very tenderly that quaint old man lifted 



210 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

the child in his arms and took her away with 
him, IsTobody seems to have known anything 
about the taming of the little savage, but a short 
time afterward she and "Fishin* Jimmie" were 
seen on the margin of the brook, each with a fish- 
pole. The old saint kept the child for weeks, and 
when she went at last to a good home she had 
exchanged her wildness for a tender, affectionate 
nature. Then people wondered how the change 
was wrought. They asked Jimmie, but his 
explanation seemed to breathe an air of mystery. 
" 'Twas fishin' done it," he said ; "only fishin' ; 
it allers works. The Christian religion itself had 
to begin with fishin', ye know." 

And nature not only ministers to our sense of 
the beautiful and the gracious, it not only heals 
oftentimes our irritableness and impatience, but 
it also has the power to awe us and inspire us 
to worship. Coleridge, in the "Hymn Before Sun- 
rise, in the Yale of Chamouny," illustrates how 
the sublime things in nature heal and inspire the 
heart. Coleridge sings, 

Entranced in prayer 
I worship the Invisible alone. 

His inspiration increases as he advances, till he 
exclaims : 

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow 
Adown enormous ravines sloap amain — 
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, 
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge! 



THE UNRECOGNIZED MINISTRIES OF LIFE 211 

Motionless torrents! silent cataracts! 
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven 
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun 
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers 
Of loviiest blue, spread garlands at your feet? 
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, 
Answer! and let the ice-planes echo, God! 
God! sing ye meadow streams with gladsome voice! 
Ye pine-groves with your soft and soul-like sounds! 
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow. 
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God! 
Thou too, hoar mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks, 
Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth! 
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills, 
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven, 
Great Hierarch! Tell thou the silent sky, 
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, 
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God. 1 

II 

Another one of the sources of healing ministry 
that are often unrecognized by us is the ministry 
that comes from laughter and good cheer. I pre- 
sume few of us appreciate how true Solomon's 
declaration in the book of Proverbs is, when he 
tells us that "A merry heart doeth good like a 
medicine." Many years ago, when Artemus Ward 
died, James Ehoades wrote a poem which sug- 
gests an exceedingly interesting thought about the 
world beyond. Mr. Ehoades said of that buoyant 
maker of laughter: 

Is he gone to a land of no laughter, 
This man that made mirth for us all? 



212 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

Proves death but a silence hereafter 
From the sounds that delight or appall? 
Once closed, have the lips no more duty, 

No more pleasure the exquisite ears; 
Has the heart done o'erflowing with beauty, 

As the eyes have with tears? 

Nay, if aught be sure, what can be surer 

Than that earth's good decays not with earth? 
And of all the heart's springs none are purer 

Than the springs of the fountains of mirth. 
He that sounds them has pierced the heart's hollows, 

The places where tears are and sleep; 
For the foam-flakes that dance in life's shallows 

Are wrung from life's deep. 

He came with a heart full of gladness 

From the glad-hearted world of the West — 
Won our laughter, but not with mere madness, 

Spake and joked with us, not in mere jest; 
For the man in our heart lingered after, 

When the merriment died from our ears, 
And those that were loudest in laughter 

Are silent in tears. 

On the death of Mark Twain Dr. Robertson 
Nicoll, writing with grateful appreciation of 
Twain, and recalling this poem of Mr. Rhoades, 
comments on it, that while cruel, wanton, poisonous 
laughter, and laughter born of sarcasm, irony, and 
satire will surely be excluded from heaven, we still 
may have assurance that laughter as the expression 
of free, exuberant, spontaneous joy will continue, 
or will be revived, in the great glad world to come. 
The best thing in the whole world is the ringing 
laughter of a child. There is nothing so musical, 



THE UNRECOGNIZED MINISTRIES OF LIFE 213 

so satisfying. And yet the Bible tells us that in 
the heavenly city boys and girls play in the streets 
thereof. Here laughter is a medicine, and I think 
we ought to allow its ministrations freer rein, 
but in that upper kingdom, where none shall say 
"I am sick," laughter, which has been robbed of 
its spontaneity by sorrow and care, shall ring forth 
again with all the joy and abandon of childhood. 

Ill 

One of the great sources of healing to the minds 
and hearts of men is found in music, and yet many 
are healed by it, restrained by it from evil, inspired 
by it to better things, without recognizing what it 
was that ministered to them. One of the most 
interesting stories in the career of that exceed- 
ingly interesting man, David, is the story of his 
undertaking to charm away the melancholy and 
the evil spirit that harassed and made miserable 
the life of King Saul. David had learned to play 
his harp on the hills where he tended his sheep. 
What a versatile fellow he was ! Sheepherder, 
harpist, poet, warrior — a wonderful man was 
David! ISTo doubt he threw into his harp much 
of the breeziness of his own joyous nature, and 
of the hills and the woods which were so dear to 
him. And we are told that for a long time it 
was a great benediction to poor old Saul, and 
lightened his burdens and cheered his heart. But 



214 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

after a while Saul's sins let the darkness down over 
his soul so that even the music of David could not 
illuminate it or charm it away, and Saul threw 
his javelin at David because his music had no 
longer power to comfort him. 

Joseph Parker, commenting on David becom- 
ing a harp-player after he had been anointed to be 
king, says David might have said, when they 
wanted him to go and play to Saul: "Play the 
harp ! Why, I am king. Why should I waste my 
time in attempting to prolong the life of the man 
who is upon my throne? The sooner he dies the 
sooner I shall reign. Not one soothing note will 
I evoke from my harp !" David would have lost 
much of his beauty to us if he had said that. There 
are two ways of looking at this harp-playing. To 
a mere outsider it was harp-playing; to David 
it was an attempt to help a man by driving away 
an evil spirit. In playing the harp David was 
doing a great spiritual work. He was a minister 
of healing. So Christ is the inspirer of all the 
greatest music in the world, and we should think 
of it not as entertainment, but as one of God's 
methods of ministering healing to the minds and 
hearts of men and women. 

IV 

The ministration of a mental and moral atmos- 
phere sweetened and perfumed by love and good- 



THE UNRECOGNIZED MINISTRIES OF LIFE 215 

ness is one of the most powerful factors in the 
world for the healing of the soul, and yet often 
unrecognized by us at the time. Many a man 
growing up in the atmosphere of a home and 
family life that is pervaded with the spirit of 
worship and the atmosphere of love, which holds 
his wandering fancies and his straying feet to the 
right path, takes it as a matter of course at the 
time, but long years after, looking back on that 
early life, many a man, with a bounding heart and 
tearful eyes, is conscious that in those days he was 
living in the atmosphere of heaven, though he did 
not recognize it. 

And what a Christian father and mother, 
through devotion and love and service, do for the 
climate of the home, the wide preaching of the 
gospel and the persistent pushing forward of the 
Christian evangel are steadily doing for the spirit- 
ual climate of the world. Few of us recognize how 
much this means. Physicians are beginning to 
understand more clearly than ever the tremendous 
benefits of climate in healing the diseases of the 
physical body. People ill almost to death, taken 
into another climate, with a different atmosphere, 
are often healed simply by breathing, uncon- 
sciously, the air of the new land. So it is the 
mission of Christianity to transform the climate 
of the world, and one cannot help but thank God 
in the midst of all the discouragements for the 



216 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

many encouraging indications which point to the 
success of this great undertaking of God through 
Jesus Christ. 

On the summit, on the borderland between the 
republics of Argentina and Chile, cast from the 
cannon of the two nations, "The Christ of the 
Andes" was erected at the time of the border dis- 
pute, when the king of England acted as arbitrator. 
On a gigantic column, surrounded by a globe on 
which the configuration of the earth is outlined, 
this colossal figure of the Christ, twenty-six feet 
in height, stands, holding a cross in one hand, ex- 
tending a blessing with the other. 

The conception of this monument came from a 
noble Christian woman of Argentina, who raised 
the funds to build it, and a venerable Christian 
priest. The base of this great monument bears in 
Spanish the following legend : "Sooner shall these 
mountains crumble into dust than the people of 
Argentina and Chile break the peace which they 
have sworn to maintain at the feet of Christ 
the Redeemer." One cannot recall such a fact 
without looking forward with hope to the time 
when He who came to make peace between man and 
God, and one of whose great titles is the Prince of 
Peace, shall so have changed the spiritual climate 
of the world that such monuments as "The Christ 
of the Andes" shall stand on the borderlands of all 
the great nations of the world ! 



CHAPTER XVII 



The Spirit of the Christian Life 
The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. — Rom. 8. 2. 

The all-important thing about a life is its spirit. 
Everything else is accidental and transitory. The 
kind of house a man lives in, the clothes he wears, 
whether for the mind or for the body, are insig- 
nificant compared to the spirit in which he lives. 
Sometimes a man becomes so immersed in busi- 
ness and so absorbed by it that he imagines his 
business is his life. But there never was a business 
yet so vast or so important but that it was an 
insignificant thing compared to the spirit in which 
it was carried on. Men have lived in a romantic 
and heroic spirit in a cave, or a log cabin, or a 
dungeon, and other men have lived in a base, 
slavish spirit in a palace. 

In the long run a life must always be judged 
by its spirit — by the spirit even more than the 
deeds. Take Napoleon, for example. He was not 
an unmixed curse to France or to the world. He 
did many great and splendid things. He gave 
France a code of laws of immense value. He 
gave her a system of public improvements that 
endured for generations. He performed a great 
many noble deeds. But the spirit of the man 

217 



218 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

and the spirit of his life was selfish, and he will 
be judged through the long ages and condemned 
on account of his spirit. Compared with the career 
of Napoleon, that of George Washington seems 
in many ways commonplace, but the spirit of his 
life was so full of unselfishness that it lifted him 
up among the great and the immortal. Through 
all ages men will hold him in honor and glory 
because of his spirit. It is our purpose at this 
time to study the spirit of the Christian life, that 
we may in the light of such a study search our 
own hearts and truly measure our own spirit. 
We do not wish to be self-deceived. And it is 
very easy to be self -deceived. J ohn had been asso- 
ciating with Jesus for a long time when, on one 
occasion, filled with indignation because they 
would not welcome Christ and his friends in a 
certain town which they were about to visit, he 
asked the privilege to pray for fire to fall from 
heaven and destroy the inhospitable people. Jesus 
quietly turned to him and said, "Ye know not 
what manner of spirit ye are of." And so it 
behooves us to keep a watchful eye on the spirit 
of our lives. If the spirit is truly Christian, then 
the life will follow. 

I 

The first characteristic of the Christian spirit 
is faith. Faith is a channel through which the 
heavenly life comes in and takes possession. We 



THE SPIRIT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 219 

are assured in the Word of God that Christ may 
dwell in our hearts by faith. And again, "By 
grace are ye saved, through faith." Faith is the 
only atmosphere through which the spiritual eye 
may behold the beauties and glories of the unseen 
world. And do not imagine that that has nothing 
to do with everyday life. Our everyday life is 
only an animal existence without it. We miss all 
the most beautiful things that are going on in 
the world if we have not the eye of faith through 
which to behold them. Do you remember that 
dinner at the house of Simon the Pharisee, where 
Mary came with her alabaster box of costly per- 
fume to anoint the head of J esus ? To her it was 
a holy, sacred deed because of her faith and her 
love. But Judas looked on it, and for him there 
was nothing dramatic or romantic or beautiful 
about it. It was just a waste of so much money. 
JSTow do not be shocked at Judas. His attitude 
was exactly the attitude of the business man of 
to-day who, immersed in his business life, looks 
on at some sentimental, self-sacrificing deed and 
says with sarcasm, "It may all be very fine, but it 
is not business." Judas simply had not the power 
to see in Mary's act a sacrament of life that was 
life indeed. As Percy Ainsworth says, comment- 
ing on J udas and his remark, it was not only that 
his mental arithmetic was an intruder, he was an 
outsider. He was heart-blind. The fact that 



220 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBXJO 

he priced the gift proved that he never saw 
it. O, these priceless things, how we miss 
them ! How Jesus pleaded for them ! Judas had 
been close to Christ for three years, and had 
heard the Master shame a king in his glory with a 
flower of the field, had heard the rich promises 
of the kingdom pledged to the poor of the earth, 
and yet he had not learned that there are things 
too beautiful to be sold. All the best things are 
given away. You can buy a book of poems. The 
soft bindings and the hand-woven paper are yours, 
but not the poetry. ~No man was ever rich enough 
to buy a poem. If it is to be his, he must have it 
as the unpurchaseable gift of God to his soul. 
Neither can you buy a home, or a happy hour, or 
a beautiful hope. All these things come by faith, 
and cannot be had in any other way. 

You can never see the beauty or the glory of 
the unseen world in Jesus Christ until you come 
to him in humble faith. I was reading recently 
an account of a scientific lecture by a brilliant 
scientist in the institute at Manchester, England. 
The main achievement of the lecture was to prove 
that the ordinary atmosphere is full of waves of 
sound so delicate that they are inaudible to the 
ordinary ear, and they can be made audible only 
by a certain instrument which is the scientist's 
invention, which was set going during the lecture, 
and reproduced the sounds that ordinarily are an 



THE SPIRIT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 221 

inaudible music in the atmosphere by which we 
are surrounded — very much the same in that 
sphere as the photographic camera in the world 
of light. Now what was it that the scientific 
lecturer in Manchester really did ? He brought 
into the consciousness of his audience certain musi- 
cal sounds that to the ordinary unassisted mind 
would be unheard. My friends, that is what Jesus 
Christ brings to us when in the attitude of faith 
we live in his presence. Jesus has gathered up 
into his Person, that he may reproduce it for all 
mankind, all the inaudible music of the spiritual 
universe, and all that our unassisted hearts and 
minds would never have heard of the love of God, 
and never have seen of the beauty of the divine 
face, has been made audible and visible to us 
forever through the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom 
the apostle said, "He brought life and immortality 
to light." The unseen universe is made visible, 
audible, and real in Jesus. 

It is this faith that characterizes the Christian 
spirit in our relation toward our fellow men — 
faith in the childhood of every human soul to God. 
Without it no man can save his fellow. A bright 
Englishman one day paced the docks at Liverpool, 
and saw great quantities of dirty waste material ly- 
ing in neglected heaps. He looked at the unpromis- 
ing substance, and through the eye of the mind saw 
finished fabrics and warm and welcome garments ; 



222 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

and, acting on his f aith, it was not long before the 
power of the imagination devised methods for con- 
verting the outcast stuff into refined and finished 
robes. A man must have that sort of spiritual eye 
when he looks on humanity, if he is to be a bless- 
ing to it. In one of our great cities a woman who 
had fallen very low, until she was counted an out- 
cast, was redeemed and brought back to a life that 
was pure, and self-respecting, and noble. After- 
ward a friend asked her how it came about, and 
she told the story of how a good man, of high 
position and holy life, one day spoke to her in a 
kindly tone and manner, and with a courtesy and 
politeness that surprised and thrilled her cold 
and careless heart. Said she, "He raised his hat 
to me as if I were a lady!" The man had ad- 
dressed her as she might be, and the buried dignity 
of her womanhood rose and answered to the call. 
O, we must have that faith in Christ and in 
humanity if we are to live the true Christ spirit 
in the world ! 

II 

Another characteristic of the Christian spirit 
is obedience. The Word of God tells us that 
"Obedience is better than sacrifice." Nothing that 
we can do will please God unless we are obedient. 
The heathen Chinaman believes that he can cheat 
his god. He believes, for instance, that he can put 
a garment upon his child, and write in large letters 



THE SPIRIT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 223 

upon the back that this child has had the cholera, 
and that the god, seeing the letters on the child's 
back and concluding that the child has already 
had the cholera, will not give the child the chol- 
era again. Even intelligent Chinamen believe 
that it is quite easy to trick a god and "take him 
in/' consequently the whole life of China is riddled 
through and through with trickery and deceit. 

But, my friends, we ought to be wise enough 
to know that we cannot trick God. No amount of 
ceremony or form in our religious life, no amount 
of pious conduct or charitable deeds, can take the 
place of obedience. It is only when we obey God 
with the loving heart and spirit of childhood that 
he is pleased with us. No man is truly good in 
God's sight unless he is obedient. Henry Drum- 
mond once said that he had traveled all the world 
over, and the finest thing he had ever seen was 
a good man. A good man! A good man is the 
noblest work of God, and a good man at the last 
analysis is simply a man who, amid all the temp- 
tations and trials of everyday life, is trying to live 
up to the best he knows ; a man who has a loving 
fear of God before him, and knows no other 
fear. A man who must please God first will always 
bring into contact with his fellow men a gentle 
soul and a kindly heart. And we know that this 
is Christlike, for that was always the first question 
on the lips of Jesus, that his life should be pleas- 



224 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

ing to the Father. When tempted in the wilder- 
ness by Satan he met every attack with the Word 
of God. To please the Father, by obedience to 
him, was the spirit of Jesus Christ. 

Ill 

Another characteristic of the Christian spirit 
is the constant desire to share our life with others, 
the persistent attempt to pass our blessings on to 
those who need them. Stuart Holden says he once 
saw written in a workingman's Bible, a man who 
was famous among all his acquaintances as a saint 
of God — written in somewhat illiterate writing — 
these words : "Use it or lose it." And that is true 
of all the blessings that come into a Christian's 
life. We must use them or lose them. Jesus says, 
"If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and 
drink." And what follows? "Out of him shall 
flow rivers of living water." My dear friend, we 
need to be careful that the channel flowing out of 
our lives does not become stopped up. This is 
true in every way, concerning everything with 
which we have to do. God gives us blessings 
to use, and if we do not use them, we either lose 
them entirely, or, what is often worse, they become 
a curse to us. We need to be careful in gathering 
money that the outflow does not become obstructed. 
Wesley's motto was, "Get all you can, save all you 
can, and give all you can." Wesley made a lot 



THE SPIRIT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 225 

of money, and might have died rich for those days, 
but he kept poor and died poor, and is among the 
immortals. 

My friends, keep the outflow open, or your 
money will be a curse to you. Old Homer, the 
Greek poet, tells us the story of King Midas, who 
was willing to give his whole soul for golden coin. 
He searched far and near for gold. When he 
reaped a harvest he saved every yellow grain to 
sow for more treasures. He bought and sold, he 
slept and wakened, to get, crying to every servant, 
"Give, give." At last his very tones became 
metallic. He loved the dandelions because they 
were golden in color. He was interested in the 
sunset because the clouds were yellow. He twisted 
the very curls of his little girl's hair because the 
glint reminded him of coin. The miser king used 
his land, his servants, his people, simply to get 
gold. Once while he was counting his treasure a 
stranger touched him upon the shoulder, bring- 
ing a message that because of his hunger for 
wealth the gods had bestowed upon him the gift 
of the golden touch. The next morning King 
Midas's first thought on waking was, "Is the prom- 
ise true ?" He spread out his fingers, and, lo, the 
soft woolen coverlet turned to gold. Springing 
up he ran about the room in a transport of delight. 
King Midas touched the chair, and it became a 
golden throne ; he touched his cane, and it became 



226 THE GBEAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

a massive walking stick; he touched the dande- 
lions, the lilac bushes and the orange trees, and all 
had golden boughs and petals. Thinking to sur- 
prise his little daughter, who alone was left in his 
house, he touched her porridge bowl, and it became 
a golden service. But, alas! when he lifted the 
water to his lips it hardened in a yellow cup. 
When he broke the bread the wheaten loaf became 
harsh metal. Then he knew that the golden touch 
was a curse, that starvation was before him, that 
the agonies of thirst would come on the morrow. 
In a tumult of terror and alarm he sprang toward 
his little daughter to gather her into his arms, 
and as he touched her, lo, a yellow, sickish hue 
advanced, as the rose retreated from the girl's 
cheek, while he found a dead, yellow statue 
enfolded in his arms. In an agony of remorse 
King Midas wandered all day long about his palace 
grounds, but wherever he went, green grass turned 
to yellow metal, the violets died at his approach, the 
very grave of the queen, at which he knelt pray- 
ing and sobbing, was covered with a hard metal, 
through which his prayers could not pierce. The 
heavens above were brass, and the earth beneath 
was yellow gold, but as he prayed for pity and 
sobbed out his remorse, God sent an angel of pity 
and pardon. "What would you give now," asked 
the angel, "for a draught of cold water in a gourd ? 
What will you give for one crust of bread ? At 



THE SPIRIT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 227 

what price do you estimate your little child's love 
and her warm arms ?" And King Midas sobbed 
out, "I will give ten thousand worlds for a crust o± 
bread, and a cup of water, and my little child." 
Then the angel bade the miser remember that life 
is in love, in service, that the master must help 
his servants, the general take care of his soldiers, 
the mistress be tender to her maid ; the measure of 
life is the measure of love, and truth, and pity, 
and kind words. 

My friends, we need in the midst of this worldly, 
business age to ponder on these great lessons. 
Christ does not oppose wealth. Christ does not 
condemn riches, but he does hold that riches must 
be used for the blessing of mankind. I am always 
alarmed for the man who is making money and 
has not learned how to give it away. If God has 
given you gifts and talents that make it possible 
for you to organize business affairs with wisdom, 
and gather much of this world's goods, well and 
good ; but as you value your soul, keep the outlet 
open. Do not wait until some future time, until 
you are still richer, before you tithe your money 
for the glory of God and the blessing of man. If 
there are streams flowing in, there must be also 
rivers flowing out. 

And it is just as true of spiritual blessings. 
Has God given you intelligence, and opportunities 
for learning, and gracious influences? Then I 



228 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

say to you, you must use them or lose them. It 
is the man or the woman who is forever pouring 
forth from mind and from heart in benediction 
and blessing who grows nobler and sweeter with 
the years. One of the most beautiful and loving of 
Christian characters in all history was that of 
Father Mathew, the great Irish Catholic temper- 
ance reformer. The old man's heart was as broad 
as humankind. One day among the long rows that 
knelt in the street to receive the pledge from his 
hand, and to receive his blessing on their heads, 
there was an Orangeman, who of course had no 
kindly feeling for the Catholic. As Father 
Mathew was about to bless him, he looked up and 
said, "You wouldn't be blessing me if you knew 
what I am." 

"And what are you, my dear?" (Father 
Mathew called everyone "My dear.") 

"I am an Orangeman, your reverence." 

"Why, God bless you, my dear, I wouldn't care 
if you were a lemon-man !" 

And so the dear old man went down the line 
blessing and blessed. 

O, what need there is for this pouring forth 
of the Christlike life in his own spirit of kindness ! 

Let us be kind; 

The way is long and lonely, 

And human hearts are asking for this blessing only — 
That we be kind. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 229 

We cannot know the grief that men may borrow, 
We cannot see the souls storm-swept by sorrow, 
But love can shine upon the way to-day, to-morrow — 
Let us be kind. 

Let us be kind; 

This is a wealth that has no measure, 

This is of heaven and earth the highest treasure — 

Let us be kind. 
A tender word, a smile of love in meeting, 
A song of hope and victory to those retreating, 
A glimpse of God and brotherhood while life is fleeting — 

Let us be kind. 

Let us be kind; 

Around the world the tears of time are falling, 
And for the loved and lost these human hearts are call- 
ing- 
Let us be kind. 
To age and youth let gracious words be spoken, 
Upon the wheel of pain so many weary lives are broken, 
We live in vain who give no tender token — 
Let us be kind. 

Let us be kind; 

The sunset tints will soon be in the west, 

Too late the flowers are laid then on the quiet breast — 

Let us be kind. 
And when the angel guides have sought and found us, 
Their hands shall link the broken ties of earth that 
bound us, 

And heaven and home shall brighten all around us — 
Let us be kind. 



CHAPTEE XVIII 



The Garments of Religion 

Thou shalt make holy garments ... for glory and 
for beauty.— Exod. 28. 2. 

Aaron, the brother of Moses, was at the head of 
the Hebrew priesthood. And we have here given 
in most interesting detail the garments which were 
prepared for him and for his sons, who were to be 
with him in the line of priests. These priests 
entered into the holy place of the tabernacle and 
offered sacrifices for the people. They alone could 
enter there. Perhaps it seems to yon a far cry 
from these priests of thousands of years ago, under 
an old and out-worn dispensation, to a sermon 
which comes home to your own hearts and the 
conditions of your life. But I assure you that 
the sermon is not far away. The garments of 
these priests were symbolical and full of suggestion 
and teaching of the character necessary to every 
man and woman who would live worshipful and 
spiritual lives among men, and in the same sense 
in which these men were priests every Christian 
man or woman to-day is a priest unto God. Peter 
in his first epistle says : "Putting away therefore all 
wickedness, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and 
envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes, 

230 



THE GARMENTS OF RELIGION 231 



long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, 
that ye may grow thereby unto salvation; if ye 
have tasted that the Lord is gracious ; unto whom 
coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but 
with God elect, precious, ye also, as living stones, 
are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priest- 
hood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to 
God through Jesus Christ." And again Peter 
says, "But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, 
a holy nation, a people for God T s own possession, 
that ye may show forth the excellencies of him who 
called you out of darkness into his marvelous 
light." 

Again, in the first chapter of Revelation, John, 
in the beginning of his great messages to the 
churches in Asia, dedicates it like this: "Unto 
him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins 
by his blood; and he made us to be a kingdom, 
to be priests unto his God and father ; to him be 
the glory and the dominion forever and ever." 

Every Christian is a priest unto God. It does 
not need a dedicated tabernacle, but as a woman 
goes about her work in the kitchen, or as the busi- 
ness man puzzles over the problems at his desk, 
or the farmer follows his plow through the soil, 
he may enter into the holy place and offer spiritual 
sacrifices before God, and receive blessing from 
heaven. 

We may then apply all spiritual suggestions 



232 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

from these chapters which tell of the appropriate 
garments for the ancient priesthood to the robe 
of character, the garments which belong to true 
religion in our own day, as well as in any other 
day in the history of man. 

I 

We have first suggested the robe of sincerity. 
The ephod was the principal garment of the priest. 
It was this that designated him as a worshiper. 
It practically covered the body, and was all of one 
piece, made of the finest material, blue in color. 
The color of the heavens clothed the worshiper as 
he went into the holy place. And so the principal 
garment of the Christian to-day must be a sincere, 
genuine, frank, open-hearted attitude toward his 
God and toward his fellows. 

Dr. George Gordon says of all the qualities in 
a noble character this of sincerity is the most 
widely and deeply interesting. Many men who do 
not value as they should the qualities of gentle- 
ness and patience will respond most heartily to 
this grand quality of sincerity. He argues that 
the reason for this is that to properly appreciate 
the graces of gentleness and meekness and patience 
requires a certain degree of moral experience and 
spiritual cultivation, whereas anybody with the 
common human instincts of a man or a woman can 
appreciate sincerity. If you were to bring before 



THE GARMENTS OF RELIGION 233 

this audience some great singer, and ask her to 
sing what she considers her most perfect song, 
it would be appreciated, I imagine, by only a small 
number of us. But if afterward she were to sing 
some song of Tom Moore's or of Bobby Burns's, 
all our hearts would be touched, and appreciation 
and delight would be on every face. The response 
would be at once intense and universal. The reason 
would be that to appreciate the classical song 
requires a certain amount of musical education 
and development, while in the other case it requires 
only a mind and heart full of human sympathy. 
So it is with this quality of sincerity. All that 
is necessary to the appreciation of its worth is 
simply that we be a man or a woman. 

Nothing can possibly please God that is not 
genuine and sincere. He is never deceived in us 
for a moment. As you step into a store window 
and pick up a beautiful vase and hold it up so 
that the light shines through it, showing at once 
whether there be any flaw or stain or spot, so God 
all the while looks through your heart and your 
character and knows whether or not it is true. 
And if we are to have standing in God's sight, there 
must be no evil motive. We must be clothed with 
the blue ephod of sincerity. And if we are to have 
influence with our fellow men, they too must feel 
in us that fine quality of sincerity which is at the 
base of all confidence. 



234 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



II 

We have also a suggestion of the music of the 
Christian life. On the skirts of this robe of blue, 
the color of the sky, there were hung bells of gold. 
And these bells would tinkle forth their golden 
music as Aaron walked among the people, and as 
he went to and from the tabernacle. The Christian 
who is to do great work for his Lord in the world 
must awaken the music of Christian joy. We may 
do this by cultivating the art of praise. The man 
who cultivates the habit of appreciation, and of 
giving thanks openly, increases his own joy and 
causes the music of his daily life to be heard. 
There is an old legend of two angels that come 
from heaven every morning and go forth on their 
errands to the world. One is the angel of prayer ; 
the other, of thanksgiving. Each carries a great 
basket. Soon the angel of petition has his basket 
filled to overflowing. Everybody pours into it 
prayers by the armful. But when the day is. ended 
the angel of thanksgiving has only here and there 
an expression of gratitude in his basket. 

You remember the ten lepers that Jesus healed 
— nine of them went off rejoicing no doubt; but 
one came back to tinkle his golden bells in the 
Saviour's presence, and Jesus called attention to it 
and asked, "Where are the nine?" The great 
strength of the Christian life is to give ourselves to 
it with such devotion and such whole-heartedness 



THE GARMENTS OF RELIGION 235 

that it rings the joy bells. Some one writes that 
we will never grow to be very serious workmen in 
any department of lif e, to amount to much among 
men, or to reach much beauty of character, until 
we get the quality of praise into our heart and 
life. It is said that Leonardo da Yinci held a lyre 
in his hand while he painted. Music inspired his 
art. This was one of the secrets of his superb 
work as an artist— his heart was glad and prais- 
ing. 'No one can do his best work with a sad 
heart. If you are in sorrow, another's grief will 
not comfort you. He who would come to you as an 
uplifter must have joy to bring to you. "The joy 
of Jehovah is your strength/' said Nehemiah to 
his people when he found them weeping, and ex- 
horted them to a better life. Trade your mourning 
veils for bells of appreciation and thanksgiving 
if you would do your best work in the world for 
God and for humanity. Some one sings: 

Going up the hill, I found it long, 
Until I met a merry song 

That kissed mine eyes to blind me. 
It mocked at me, and turned and fled, 
But played on, fluttering overhead, 
Till I forgot I went footsore, 
And the dusty hill that rose before 

Was the blue hill far behind me. 

I was reading the other day of a little boy who 
had an accident. The doctor came and found the 
leg badly broken. The boy bore the setting 



236 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

patiently. He set his tfeeth and never whimpered. 
The mother slipped out of the room to hide her 
own tears— she could not stand it as well as her 
boy did. Outside she heard a faint sound, and 
hurried back, almost hoping to find him crying. 

"My boy," she said, "do you want something? 
I thought I heard you call," 

"Oh, no, mother," he said, "I did not call. I 
just thought I would try singing a bit." And 
he went on with the song. 

My friends, sew the golden bells on your robe 
of life, for the tinkling music of joy and of thanks- 
giving is the music that will keep up your own 
courage and the courage of your neighbors in all 
the struggles of your earthly experience. 

Ill 

We have also a suggestion of fruitfulness. 
Between every two of the golden bells on that 
blue robe of Aaron's there was to be worked a 
pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe. To make 
sure that there should be just as many pomegran-* 
ates as there were bells the writer repeats it like 
this: "A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden 
bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe 
round about." This would suggest to us that a 
man ought to do as much good as he makes music. 
It is a terrible thing when a Christian rings many 
bells, and wears no pomegranates on his robe. 



THE GARMENTS OF RELIGION 237 

The truly religious life must be fruitful as well 
as musical. You remember the fruit tree that 
Jesus cursed because it bore no fruit. It was 
a beautiful tree, and there were plenty of leaves, 
but no fruit. There can be no genuine Christian 
life without fruit. The music of the bells will 
sound hollow unless accompanied by the pomegran- 
ates of Christian deeds. Dr. Hillis makes a tree 
say: "My roots are strong, my boughs elastic and 
tough, firm against the stroke of wind and storm. 
Look at my bark, how smooth and fresh; and 
where is there a tree whose tides of sap are fuller 
or richer ? What leaves, too, are these that I have 
woven out of the threads of sun and soil ! Little 
wonder that the birds build their nests in my 
branches, while the cattle find shade beneath my 
boughs." Well, this is a good argument — for an 
apple tree — but a poor one for a man. The hungry 
farmer boy does not leap the fence on his way to 
the apple tree looking for sap or boughs or leaves — 
he is looking for apples. And God has built this 
world not for the root moralities only. Industry 
is good — it is good not to lie and not to steal and 
not to kill and not to perjure; but that is not 
enough. A man must go on from the leaf to the 
fruit. The fruit is truth in the inner parts, justice 
measured by God's standard, and mercy that tem- 
pers justice, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle- 
ness, goodness, faith that trusts, and will not be 



238 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

confounded. In April the peach orchard lends a 
faint pink flush to the distant hillside ; that stands 
for the moralities. In September the ripe fruit 
lends a golden blush of clustered food to the 
same hill ; and that is the fruit of religion. 

Among the touching incidents in connection 
with the Messina earthquake is the story of an old 
man on board a rescue ship which took refugees to 
Naples. In his arms he held a little girl whose 
face was covered with blood. 

"Is that your child ?" they asked him. 

"No," he answered. "Yesterday I found her on 
the pavement in Messina. I picked her up and 
cared for her. No one claimed her and I could not 
leave her. I have had her in my arms ever since." 

The love in that old man's heart as he sits there 
with his arms about the little stranger child is 
greater than the earthquake whose shock it sur- 
vived. For ages God has been making mountains 
and volcanoes, but for ages also he has been mak- 
ing men, and this divine love is the flower and fruit 
of the noblest manhood. We must show our Chris- 
tian character by our fruits. 

IV 

We have a suggestion of holiness, not holiness in 
a cold abstract, but a purity and wholesomeness of 
nature. Aaron was to wear upon his bosom a plate 
of gold, and graven upon it, like the engravings 



THE GARMENTS OF RELIGION 239 



of a signet, were to be the words, "Holy to the 
Lord/' The life of J esus and all the teaching of 
the New Testament emphasize to us the fact that 
all our common life is to be sanctified and conse- 
crated by our attitude toward God. What we do 
may be very humble and common, but it is beauti- 
fied and glorified if the motive be noble and true. 
I like the old legend of Saint Anthony, who lived 
many years in the desert in fasting and prayer, 
until he came to think he was the holiest man on 
earth. But one day, while at his devotions, there 
seemed to speak to him a voice from heaven say- 
ing: " Anthony, deceive not thyself. Thou art not 
so holy as the cobbler in Alexandria." And Saint 
Anthony, disturbed, took his staff, trudged to 
Alexandria, confronted his possible rival, and said : 
"Declare to me your good works; your alms- 
giving ; the great thing you are doing for God and 
man, for it' has been revealed to me from heaven 
that you are holier than I." 

The cobbler laughed and said: "Good deeds do 
I none, and great thoughts are wholly beyond me. 
I rise betimes in the morning and see to my family, 
and then I go to my work and spend the whole day 
getting my living. I try to teach my children to 
love God and man, and help my neighbors when 
I can. This is the sum of my holiness." 

"Verily," said Saint Anthony, "I have been 
blind. Thou hast found the secret of eternal life." 



240 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

My dear friends, we need to recall again and 
again to ourselves that true holiness is health, 
wholesomeness of nature to do the duty that is 
next to us with honest heart the best we can, with 
worship toward God and love toward men. In the 
Eiks Museum at Amsterdam, hangs Mcolaas 
Maes's world-famed picture, "Old Woman Saying 
Grace." Rather an odd subject for a painter to 
choose. A worn old crone, with wrinkled skin and 
gray scanty locks. Were there no laughing, bright- 
eyed girls in all gay Amsterdam for Mcolaas 
Maes to draw? Yet, as we look, we can under- 
stand. The poor, worn face grows beautiful. 
What is the mystery ? A commonplace type ; we 
pass such in the crowded streets, hardly noticing 
them; gray, silent figures, trudging, bent beneath 
their burdens, toiling in the fields, through open 
cottage doorways, thin shrinking shadows of 
humanity. What can there be of beauty about 
such ? And as we look all that the artist has seen 
comes gradually to be revealed to us; the beauty 
underlying- — the beauty of those long years of 
patient labor for others, the beauty of that life of 
daily self-sacrifice. These mothers of the poor! 
The long, heroic battle for bread, not for them- 
selves, but for the children. A long, brave fight 
is nearly done. She sits alone, with folded hands. 
The artist has painted for us the life behind. The 
old, worn face grows beautiful. 



THE GARMENTS OF RELIGION 



241 



Robert Burns has given us the same suggestion 
in his poem which tells of "The Cotter's Saturday 
Night." He makes us look at the toil-worn cotter 
— mere clodhopper he was counted in those days — 
his back forever bent by his dull labor, an unedu- 
cated, uncultured boor. What brotherhood can 
your fine gentleman have with such ? But the poet 
wraps round us his mantle of invisibility, woven 
of the threads of sympathy. And as we read we 
steal into the weather-beaten, lonely cot. It is 
Saturday night. The cotter sits beside his hearth, 
the open Bible before him, his children round him, 
the toil-worn laborer of the fields — he, too, is 
priest and king, the wise, just ruler of his people. 
"The rank is but the guinea stamp," to the poet 
only a thin disguise. And we do not wonder to 
hear him sing: 

Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride, 

In all the pomp of method and of art, 
When men display to congregations wide 

Devotion's ev'ry grace, except the heart! 
The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert, 

The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole; 
But haply, in some cottage far apart, 

May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul; 
And in his Book of Life the inmates poor enroll. 

V 

I must not fail to call attention to the direct 
announcement here that in the robe of righteous 
character Grod thinks of beauty and glory. As 



242 TH^E GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

has been well said, the Christian life is not a life 
of self-limitation and narrowness. "Jesus never 
told any husbandman to strip the tree of leaves, 
flower, and fruit ; what he did say to the young hus- 
bandman was, 'Lose your self-indulgence that you 
may dig about the roots and make the leaves blos- 
som. Take up that yoke called a spade and a 
pruning knife, that the blossoms may be beautiful 
and the clusters rich.' He did not ask the mer- 
chant to give up his gold, but to make his gold 
bright with use and with service. He did not 
command the youth to forswear friendship; he 
bade him make his friendship beautiful by serv- 
ice and sympathy. He did not command the 
jurist or scholar to disclaim the joys of wisdom 
and office, but he bade them use their offices and 
honors to promote the highest end. He did not 
say, give up wit and humor, but he bade men use 
their wit to make wrong ridiculous and their 
humor to pour sunshine and sweetness into all 
hours." 

My friends, there is no character or life so 
beautiful as the true Christian life. It will make 
the life that is already beautiful to have the added 
glory of heaven, kissing earth's beauty with a 
divine radiance. To the life that is dark and 
gloomy, which could have no beauty at all other- 
wise, it can give a glory that will change its whole 
character. 



THE GARMENTS OF RELIGION 243 

There was a man dying in Tierra del Fuego. His 
name was Allen Gardener. When a ship came on 
that wind-swept and storm-beaten point of land 
they found the diary of a man, and they found 
his corpse. And he starved to death for the 
sake of the kingdom of God. And while starva- 
tion bit its dull teeth into his life, day after day 
he wrote in his book, "Raptures, raptures, peace, 
peace, peace!" And yet this case is not more 
wonderful to me than that of George Matheson, 
the blind preacher of Edinburgh. During all the 
days of his public life Matheson never saw a 
human face, and yet he was so glorified by the 
presence of Christ in his heart and life that life 
to him was infinitely beautiful and precious. He 
lived and died like a king. A little before he 
went away he was able to sing lines that reveal 
to us his beauty of soul : 

Love that wilt not let me go, 
I rest my weary soul in thee; 

1 give thee back the life I owe, 
That in thine ocean depths its flow 

May richer, fuller be. 

O Light that followest all my way, 

I yield my flickering torch to thee; 
My heart restores its borrowed ray, 
That in thy sunshine's blaze its day 
May brighter, fairer be. 



244 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

Joy that seekest me through pain, 
I cannot close my heart to thee; 

1 trace the rainbow through the rain, 
And feel the promise is not vain 

That morn shall tearless be. 

Cross that liftest up my head, 
I dare not ask to fly from thee; 

1 lay in dust life's glory dead, 

And from the ground there blossoms red 
Life that shall endless be. 



CHAPTEE XIX 



The Worth of a Man 

I will make a man more precious than fine gold. — 
Isa. 13. 12. 

The prophet was promising a day of terrible 
trouble for great Babylon, and this is the climax of 
a nation's sorrow. It was bad enough to have the 
land shorn of its harvests, and all the standing 
grain trampled under the feet of war horses ; bad 
enough to have a consuming fire lay hold upon its 
houses ; bad enough to have pride turned into 
shame, wealth into poverty, power into captivity. 
But, thus far, hope was left, for men were left. 
Leave a nation its men, and it will still live. 
Leave it men, and its enemies may do their worst ; 
the day will pass, to-morrow they will repair the 
damage and begin over again. A while ago, when 
Germany triumphed over France under the Second 
Napoleon, the war damages demanded of France 
by the German Bismarck were such a stupendous 
sum that the whole world shuddered, and many 
wise men prophesied that France would never 
hold up her head again among the nations of the 
earth. But, astonishing as the great burden was, 
it was not to be compared with the world's aston- 
ishment at the rapidity and ease with which 

245 



246 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

France lifted it, and with it lifted herself to a 
higher place than ever among the peoples of the 
earth. So long as she had her men left she was 
rich in resources. 

But the prophet says of Babylon that the day 
is coming when there shall be no more men. The 
widows and fatherless children shall search 
through the ruined streets, and a man shall be as 
rare a sight as a purse of gold. And that is the 
essence of our theme, and it is the essence of Chris- 
tianity. The emphasis of Christianity is put upon 
men, not money. That is what the Master taught. 
Jesus Christ was interested in men, and we have 
our theme here in "The Worth of a Man." 

I 

Man in this world is in the making. We are 

often confused in our thinking concerning what 
makes a man, because all that is spiritual in man 
has to be developed in harmony with the body and 
through the body. All man's spiritual character 
expresses itself through the body. So long as a 
man is in this world, the body is as much a part 
of the man as is his mind and heart, and we are 
unable to think of them clearly as separate, though 
we know there is growing up a personality which 
is getting its education and training, but after a 
while may move out from the body and be clothed 
upon with a new body, as Paul says, "A house not 



THE WORTH OF A MAN 



247 



made with hands, eternal in the heavens." But 

here and now every noble characteristic of man, as 

well as everything that is mean and low, finds 

its expression through the body, and whether the 

tendencies of our human nature shall be good or 

evil depends altogether on the use we make of it. 

For we all know that our greatest vices are often 

but the exaggeration of our truest virtues, and a 

man is good or bad according to the control which 

masters him. Pope sings this truth when he says : 

As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care, 
On savage stocks inserted, learn to bear; 
The surest virtues thus from passions shoot, 
Wild nature's vigor working at the root. 

Lust, through some certain strainers well refined, 

Is gentle love, and charms all womankind; 

Envy, to which the ignoble mind's a slave, 

Is emulation in the learned or brave; 

Nor virtue, male or female, can we name, 

But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame. 

Thus nature gives us (let it check our pride) 

The virtue nearest to our vice allied; 

Reason the bias turns from good to ill, 

And Nero reigns a Titus, if he will. 

Reginald Campbell tells how he went through 
the Worcester porcelain works in England. He 
was shown, to begin with, the hard substances 
which had to be ground up to form the clay ; there 
were various qualities of clay, differing in accord- 
ance with the nature of the several ingredients 
composing them. Then one would see a potter at 



248 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

work with a wheel, manipulating the clay ; it had 
to be worked into numerous fantastic shapes 
before the actual design began to appear. Some 
of the clays required more of this fashioning 
than others, and sometimes it was hard to guess 
what was coming as the moist substance lay whirl- 
ing and twisting on the wheel. But it was beauti- 
ful to see it emerge. It was as though the clay 
were revealing a soul, bodying forth an idea. Then 
came the burning, then the painting of beautiful 
designs on the vessel, and more burning ; it might 
have to go through the fire a number of times 
before it was ready for the polishing. And what 
struck Campbell as most skillful of all, on the 
part of those who produced these beautiful works 
of art, was the fact that the colors laid on by the 
brush before the burning were not the same as 
those of the picture which afterward became part 
of the fabric of the vessel in the furnace. The 
artist had to know beforehand exactly what would 
happen ; he had the finished picture in his mind 
all the while he was painting something that looked 
quite different. In a sense it was the clay that did 
the painting. It would not have been of much use 
to lay the same colors on wood or iron, and they 
varied, even as it was, with the nature of the clay 
on which they were imposed. In the furnace the 
clay absorbed them; as it were, made them part 
of itself, poured its own substance into them, 



THE WORTH OF A MAN 



249 



becoming in the end a thing of beauty through its 
own effect upon the little sheaths and lines of 
matter received from the painter's hand. 

Now, the making of a man is very much like 
that. God is the potter and we are the clay, but he 
works from within instead of from without. At 
first the young human being seems almost entirely 
animal. The clay of our physical being has to 
take a good many fantastic shapes under the Divine 
Potter's hand before the soul begins to shine 
through. This must be what Paul means when he 
says, "First . . . that which is natural ; and 
afterward that which is spiritual." The spirit is 
there all the time, or there would be no body ; but 
the body is the basis of all the higher manifesta- 
tions of the spirit, just as the clay is the basis of 
the beautiful Worcester porcelain. We should call 
nothing bad because it is of the earth ; we must not 
despise the body, for it is the temple of the living 
God. Then come the desires, the feelings, emo- 
tions, passions, of our nature, which can lift us 
up to heaven or thrust us down to hell. None of 
these are essentially unclean ; they are the coloring 
laid on by the Master-artist through which the soul 
is asserting itself by means of our burning clay. 
Only God can see the finished picture, the glorious 
vessel that is to be, when all the burnings are over 
and all the desires of the flesh have been purified 
and made to become the perfect expression of the 



250 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

indwelling spirit. Then we shall forget all the 
partial development in the completed whole ; then 
all blemishes and imperfections shall disappear ; 
then, and not till then, will the meaning of the 
long, slow discipline of earth become fully apparent 
and we shine forth as the sun in the kingdom 
of our Father. Browning saw this clearly when 
he wrote: 

Let us not always say, 

"Spite of this flesh to-day 
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!" 

As the bird wings and sings, 

Let us cry, "All good things 
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh 
helps soul!" 

All I could never he, 
All men ignored in me, 
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher 
shaped. 

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: 
What entered into thee, 
That was, is, and shall be: 
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay 
endure. 

II 

Man is worth more than his institutions or his 
possessions. There have been a great many people 
in the world who have had the idea that the chief 
end of man was to support certain institutions. 
Christ put his strong hand of disapproval on this 
during his ministry. Many people in that day 
thought that the Jewish ceremonial law was vastly 



THE WORTH OF A MAN 



251 



more sacred than the men who worshiped by means 
of it. Their ceremonies were obstructing human 
growth, crippling virtue, and smothering charity, 
but that was nothing to them so long as the tech- 
nique of their ceremonies was observed; and it 
produced a great sensation when Christ told them 
that the Sabbath was made for man and not man 
for the Sabbath — that men were of infinitely more 
account than all their religious machinery. They 
called him a blasphemer and were ready to kill 
him, and did kill him, because he set men above 
rules and regulations. And our institutions to-day 
must ever be judged by the influence which they 
exert on men. 

Man is worth more than anything he possesses. 
Jesus says: "A man's life consisteth not in the 
abundance of the things which he possesseth." 
Many people in our own day do not act as if they 
believed this. If we look around us and see the 
respect paid to wealth, even when it is joined to 
a personality that is but a caricature of manhood, 
even when the wealth has been gathered by fraud 
and dishonesty as the price of dishonor and shame, 
we shall be convinced that there are many in our 
day who do not believe that a man is more precious 
than gold. It is not the rich alone whose judg- 
ment in this matter goes astray; the poor fall 
into the same error. We hear a poor man saying, 
bitterly, that "money does not make the man," 



252 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

while his conduct shows that he really thinks that 
money does make the man. And we need to watch 
ourselves that we do not become confused in our 
judgment. If we are not careful, we shall often 
find ourselves preferring gold to manhood ; labor- 
ing more diligently to enlarge our possessions than 
to improve ourselves. It is not true that property 
is of no consequence ; but possessions get all their 
value from their relation to the man and from 
their power to build up men. A man's belongings 
are good just in proportion as they assist him in 
the development of his character and as he uses 
them to develop manhood in others. 

Ill 

Man gives value to everything else. When man 
loses his value, then everything else loses its value. 
Go to any country where man is cheap, and lands 
and flocks and herds and everything else are com- 
paratively worthless. Make man high-priced, 
noble, splendid, and property soars in value. Not 
only is this so, but life is rich and valuable only 
as men become valuable. Life is not worth living 
unless it is associated with men and women whom 
we esteem worth while. Sympathy and fellowship 
and love of our kind held at high value are essen- 
tial, not only to the happiness of our lives, but to 
our true development. Tennyson deals with this 
most powerfully in his poem entitled "The Palace 



THE WORTH OF A MAN 



253 



of Art." He tells the story of one who undertook 
to live life aloof from men. He sings : 

I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house, 

Wherein at ease for aye to dwell. 
I said, "O Soul, make merry and carouse, 

Dear soul, for all is well. ,, 

A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnished brass, 

I chose. The ranged ramparts bright 
From level-meadow bases of deep grass 

Suddenly scaled the light 

Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or shelf 

The rock rose clear, or winding stair. 
My soul would live alone unto herself 

In her high palace there. 

And "while the world runs round and round," I said, 

"Reign thou apart, a quiet king, 
Still as, while Saturn whirls, his steadfast shade 

Sleeps on his luminous ring/' 

To which my soul made answer readily: 

"Trust me, in bliss I shall abide 
In this great mansion that is built for me 

So royal-rich and wide." 

And this lordly man for a while congratulates 
himself on his isolation and looks out upon the 
world with its struggling men and women with 
contempt. He sings of them with a sneer : 

"O Gadlike isolation which art mine, 

I can but count thee perfect gain, 
What time I watch the darkening droves of swine 

That range on yonder plain. 



254 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



"In filthy sloughs they roll a prurient skin, 
They graze and wallow, breed and sleep; 

And oft some brainless devil enters in, 
And drives them to the deep." 

But as time passes on, his contempt for others 
changes to pity, and then to terror for himself. 
He finds that man was not made to live alone. 
He finds that he is dwarfed and crippled and beg- 
gared for the lack of human sympathy and fellow- 
ship. And at last, singing of the soul as of a 
woman, he says: 

She howled aloud, "I am on fire within. 
There comes no murmur of reply. 

What is it that will take away my sin, 
And save me lest I die?" 

So when four years were wholly finished, 

She threw her royal robes away. 
"Make me a cottage in the vale," she said, 

"Where I may mourn and pray. 

"Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are 

So lightly, beautifully built: 
Perhaps I may return with others there 

When I have purged my guilt." 

Browning, too, in his story of "Paracelsus," 
the gifted man who degenerated into a quack, has 
marked it as one of the sins of that strangely com- 
plex soul, that he would be a philanthropist, but 
without sympathy, without dependence upon and 
fellowship with others. Browning makes that the 
secret of his failure to be truly great. In the 
closing scene of his life he makes him sing: 



THE WORTH OF A MAN 



255 



I learned my own deep error; love's undoing 

Taught me the worth of love in man's estate, 

And what proportion love should hold with power 

In his right constitution; love preceding 

Power, and with much power, always much more love; 

Love still too straitened in his present means, 

And earnest for new power to set love free. 

I learned this, and supposed the whole was learned: 

And thus, when men received with stupid wonder 

My first revealings, would have worshiped me, 

And I despised and loathed their proffered praise — 

When with awakened eyes, they took revenge 

For past credulity in casting shame 

On my real knowledge, and I hated them — 

It was not strange I saw no good in man, 

To overbalance all the wear and waste 

Of faculties, displayed in vain, but born 

To prosper in some better sphere: and why? 

In my own heart love had not been made wise 

To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind, 

To know even hate is but a mask of love's, 

To see a good in evil, and a hope 

In ill success; to sympathize, be proud 

Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim 

Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies, 

Their prejudice and fears and cares and doubts; 

All with a touch of nobleness, despite 

Their error, upward tending although weak, 

Like plants in mines which never saw the sun, 

But dream of him, and guess where he may be, 

And do their best to climb and get to him. 

All this I knew not, and I failed. 

And so all men have failed of the noblest end of 
life who have not counted men of more value than 
things. It is by our very burdens borne for others 
that our manhood grows great Brierly, the Eng- 



256 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

lish moralist, says that when we are children, we 
are like young colts let loose in the field. But 
life captures us, puts speedily the bit in our 
mouth, lays on, piece by piece, the baggage we 
are appointed to carry; piles it, until often we 
stagger under the load and wonder, from day to 
day, whence the strength will come to bear it. 

A man finds himself a man of family, and that 
means a hundred new pressures. The going is 
now heavy, but it is in the tug and wrestle of it 
that he finds his manhood. He knows not the 
fight that is in him till he has to fight for others. 
He wonders at his early selfishness; he has half 
a dozen now to think of before himself! How 
careless was he in those first years about principles 
and conduct ! But with these young people ask- 
ing questions and wanting guidance he wakes to 
his responsibility. I knew a man who was prone 
to be profane, and he married, and after a while 
had a little son, a youngster toddling around. His 
cousin, a lady, told me that one day, being vexed 
about something that was unusually provoking, she 
turned laughingly to this man and said : "Charley, 
this calls for profanity. Can't you help me out ?" 
The man looked across the room at his son and 
looked back at her with a strange, startled glance 
and shook his head. The little story is suggestive 
of the way the very burdens we bear for our fel- 
lows sober us and make men of us. 



THE WORTH OF A MAN 



257 



But a family does not exhaust a man's carry- 
ing capacity. The great spirits have all humanity 
on their shoulders. Think of the burdens Abra- 
ham Lincoln carried, and think what a man they 
made of him. As men bare their shoulders to the 
great loads their fellowship expands. The threads 
of their sympathy, spun out of their heart's fiber, 
stretch to the bounds of the world. With Paul 
they have to say; "Who is weak, and I am not 
weak? Who is offended, and I burn not?" The 
secret of man's growth under these human bur- 
dens lies in the divine fellowship into which they 
bring him. The Titans, who bear the world ol 
their shoulders, do it by the magic of a divine 
reenforcement from within. In one of the old 
German folk songs we read how Gunther, in his 
trial of strength with the terrible Brunhilda, per- 
formed his task by the aid of Siegfried, who, 
draped in a cloak of invisibility, unseen by the 
spectators, enabled his friend to hurl the stone 
and to poise the spear. And that is forever the 
secret of great souls who bless the world. Not the 
giants only; the feeble, the meek of the earth, 
have learned it. It is the secret grace of a pres- 
ent God, on whose infinity we cast our burdens. 
Life, for every one of us, however small our place, 
is a load too heavy to bear alone; too heavy 
because, for each of us, it is weighted with death 
and eternity. It is made so, that by the compul- 



258 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

sion of our weakness we may be pressed into alli- 
ance with a power that is not our own. 

I 

IV 

Man's supreme value, however, must always 
lie in the fact that, at the bottom, at his worst, at his 
lowest, man is the son of God, with the capacity 
for growth, and that God has not lost his interest 
in him, and that he may become like Jesus Christ. 
One must have this glance toward the future to 
appreciate man. If we see him only here in the 
dust and noise and turmoil of the struggle he may 
seem cheap enough ; but if you look toward the fu- 
ture, you see the long shadow which he casts. Your 
point of view is everything. The mother bends 
over her babe with infinite hope and comfort, not 
at the present value of the child alone, though 
that is precious, but she has a vision of its possible 
future. She toils, endures, suffers, sacrifices for 
the child, because her vision of the child's future 
is bright with the splendor of a noble manhood, 
and he stands before her clad in the garments 
of beauty and power. 

But it is not only the child watched over and 
loved and mothered that we may see to be precious. 
A little orphan waif, a stray, a street Arab, rag- 
ged, sinful, neglected, forgotten, sleeping in an 
ash-barrel, seems insignificant enough if you look 
at it simply in the present ; but if you turn your 



THE WORTH OF A MATT 



259 



eye toward the possibilities wrapped up in this 
bundle of rags and wretchedness, you may find, 
as it has been illustrated hundreds of times in our 
own American history, a great bishop, or states- 
man, or philanthropist, who will be of supreme 
benediction to the world. 

In the light of the future man grows great. 
The apostle says we know not exactly what we 
shall be, but this we do know, that if we give our- 
selves to the development of Christian life and 
character, after awhile we shall come to be like 
Jesus Christ, and when we shall see him as he 
is men shall see that we are like him. There, as 
Frederick Shannon says, is the ultimate goal of 
our manhood — to be like Jesus Christ, the most 
beautiful and glorious character in all history. 
This is the one thing that will satisfy mankind 
and justify our creation. To be like him — that 
will be glory enough for kings and queens, heroes 
and martyrs, saints and sages, men and angels! 
To be like him — that will excel the beauty of silver 
and gold, earth and sea, suns and stars! To be 
like him — that will turn every fear into laughter, 
every sob into song, every loss into gain ! To be 
like him — that will transform sorrow into joy, 
defeat into triumph, death into life! 



CHAPTER XX 



The Tbue Food of the Christian Life 

He that eateth me, even he shall live by me. — John 
6. 57. 

This is one of the most daring and wonderful 
utterances of Christ. It comes in connection with 
Christ's journey into the wilderness with his 
disciples in search of rest. Multitudes of people 
with their sick folks and their crippled, fearing 
that he would leave the country, and they would 
fail to obtain the help which they so sorely needed, 
followed him to the number of many thousands. 
The disciples thought it was an imposition, and 
that the Master ought to have some opportunity 
for rest ; but Jesus, with infinite patience and com- 
passion, welcomed them, and gave himself to the 
healing of their sick and the comforting of their 
hearts. Afterward, when they were faint with 
hunger, he wrought the miracle which multiplied 
the little lad's loaves and fishes into abundance of 
food for the great crowd. It was the next day 
after this occasion, when the people had come to 
him again, that Jesus reminded them that they 
had come because of the miracle he wrought in 
regard to the bread, and he takes that for a text 
and preaches one of the most wonderful of all his 

260 



THE TRUE FOOD OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 261 

sermons, in which he declares that he is the Bread 
which cometh down from heaven, and that who- 
soever eateth him shall live by him. These people 
who listened to him at first accepted it in a very 
superficial way and cried out, "Lord, evermore 
give us this bread/' just as the woman at the well 
of Sychar had said to him, "Give me this water, 
that I come not hither to draw." But when they 
began to think more seriously about it, they were 
perplexed and said one to another: "Is not this 
J esus, the son of J oseph, whose father and mother 
we know? How is it then that he saith, I came 
down from heaven? . . . How can this man 
give us his flesh to eat ? . . . This is a hard say- 
ing ; who can hear it ?" As Dr. Robertson Nicoll 
recently says in a great sermon on "The Power of 
Piety," it was a hard saying, and it is hard still. 
But it remains forever true that Jesus is the 
Bread of Life, that it is he who possesses the true 
and undying life. It is he who is the Bread, not 
\ his religious teachings, not his ethical precepts, 
but he himself. The Bread of Heaven is he. 
True, the Word of God is the food of the soul, 
but when we say that, we do not say enough. He 
is the Bread that is better than the manna in the 
wilderness, which Israel found so sweet. If you 
search the springs of the new nature, you find the 
Lord Jesus at the fount of all. If you cut into 
the center of the renewed heart, Christ is there. 



262 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

That is, there is a living and a spiritual unity 
between Christ and the redeemed soul, and it is 
according as that unity is maintained that the 
spirit flags or grows strong. We eat Christ and 
live by him when we live in the faith and love 
which brings his presence to us, that causes us to 
cleave to him with a fond affection, so that we 
constantly desire communion with him. Paul 
gives utterance to it when he says: "I count all 
things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge 
of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suf- 
fered the loss of all things, and do count them but 
dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in 
him, not having mine own righteousness, which 
is of the law, but that which is through the faith 
of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by 
faith: that I may know him, and the power of 
his resurrection, and the fellowship of his suf- 
ferings." 

I am sure it cannot help but strengthen and 
comfort our hearts to consider for a little some of 
the great features of our Christian lives which 
depend absolutely for their food on J esus Christ. 

I 

Christ is the food which alone can sustain our 
personal righteousness of character. Lord Hugh 
Cecil, the son of the famous Lord Salisbury, recent 
premier of Great Britain, speaking before the 



THE TRUE FOOD OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 263 



Christian Evidence Society, in England, awhile 
ago, raised a very interesting question. He de- 
clared that the great danger that threatens us is 
not that people regard Christ as untrue, but that 
they are coming to regard him as unnecessary. 
The conquests of medical science over pain, and 
of social reform over bad conditions of living, 
are helping to lessen belief in sin, and, conse- 
quently, belief in the need of a Divine Redeemer. 
This is an element in the present religious situ- 
ation which needs to be carefully considered. It 
is a form of materialism, since its outlook is lim- 
ited to things which can be seen and handled, and 
it is a very subtle form, since it assumes to be 
allied with progress. Much of our modern social 
preaching aids this feeling that Christ is unneces- 
sary. When he is proclaimed first and foremost as 
Reformer there will be little hungering after him 
as Redeemer, men being so easily contented with 
surface reformation. The sense of sin and of 
need is not produced by the proclamation of a 
Christ who establishes a material kingdom. They 
alone cry, "I am a sinful man, Lord," who, like 
Peter, come into contact with his awful holiness. 
There is in all this an insidious and terrible dan- 
ger. Nothing can ever take the place of Jesus 
Christ as the Saviour and Redeemer of the sinner. 

A lady had a plant, a very beautiful fern. She 
set it in the very best possible place in the house 



264 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

and attended it with the greatest care. She 
thought she was doing the best she could with it, 
but after awhile it withered, and though she 
renewed her diligence, it withered more and more. 
A florist came to visit her, a specialist in this line. 
Being very anxious about this plant, she asked 
him what was the matter with it. He looked at 
it closely, and without saying a single word he 
thrust his hand into the earth around the root of 
the fern and when he drew it out he said, "I 
thought so." 

She did not know what he meant. There was a 
little black spot on his finger. 

"That," said the florist, "is a snail. These 
snails are very fond of this particular kind of 
fern, and it takes only one snail at the heart of 
the fern to kill it." 

So, my dear friends, it takes only one snail of 
sin at the heart of a man or a woman to destroy 
the spiritual life and the beauty and glory of the 
character, and there is only one Florist who is 
able to kill the snail of sin, and transform into 
beauty the delicate but glorious plant of righteous- 
ness in the human soul, and he is J esus Christ. 

This sublime truth, that we must all depend 
for our spiritual food to sustain our personal 
righteousness on Christ alone, puts us all on a 
par, and makes it impossible for any one of us 
to excuse himself from the purest and holiest 



THE TRUE FOOD OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 265 

living. Many people are ready to excuse them- 
selves from saintly living because of what 
they declare are the limitations of their spiritual 
natures. A man says: "My nature is what 
it is; it has its limitations, its incapacities, 
its inherent biases ; it cannot but be hasty, sensual, 
crooked, slothful, or whatever it may be; I can 
only resign myself to it, and God must take me 
as I am. I cannot by any effort add a cubit to 
my moral stature ; it is as idle to ask me to be a 
saint like Paul or J ohn as to be a poet like Shake- 
speare or a musician like Beethoven." The fallacy 
in this lies in a misapprehension of what is our 
nature. What we call our nature, that which has 
so much evil in it, is not nature as God gave it 
to us, but a nature which has been produced by sin. 
It is not God's will for us at all. God's will is 
with us only when we resist what is evil in our 
present nature, and in the help and spirit of Jesus 
Christ rise above it. Not in your own strength, 
but in the strength that comes from feeding upon 
Christ, may you rise into beauty and strength 
and glory of character beyond all your present 
dreams. 

II 

Christ is the food upon which alone we may 
find power to win and to bless others. Great 
revivals of true religion, marvelous upheavals for 
righteousness which have turned multitudes of 



266 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

people away from sensual and wicked living and 
aroused in them the spirit of devotion and worship 
toward God and kindliness and brotherhood toward 
their fellow men, have always been brought about 
by men and women who fed upon Jesus Christ. 
They have been all sorts and conditions of men, 
from Paul all the way down the centuries to Gen- 
eral Booth and Gipsy Smith, some learned, and 
some ignorant of the world's wisdom, some of great 
natural intelligence and others handicapped by 
many limitations in intellectual capability; but 
one thing has been notable about every one of 
them, and that is that the supreme food on which 
he fed his soul was Jesus Christ. 

Dr. W. J. Dawson, in one of his recent sermons, 
draws a very beautiful picture of Francis of 
Assisi. Francis was the son of a rich man, never 
a priest, never ordained, just a plain layman. 
You will please notice that. He goes into the 
woods. His heart is troubled for his social duties 
and what he ought to do for poor folks, and in this 
woods, in a little chapel, he hears the call of 
Christ. He renounces his wealth, and when his 
father renounces him in turn, Francis says, "I 
must go to my heavenly Father, for I have no 
other father left." He goes out into the high- 
way to find the kind of work that Christ would 
have done, and in those days there were lepers in 
the land, many lepers. Francis went first of all 



THE TRUE FOOD OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 267 

to them, and his pity overcame his repulsion, and 
he beautifully called them "God's patients." He 
built for them hospitals, and he washed their 
sores, he nursed them, he lived with them, and he 
toiled for them, until people began to say a new 
Christ had sprung up, and it was a true saying. 
John of Bologna tells us that in the year of 1212 
he heard that Francis was to speak at Bologna, 
and went to hear him. He expected from so 
famous a man great oratory, and when he got 
there he found that Francis spoke quite quietly 
and colloquially. But when Francis had finished 
that conversational address, which astonished John 
of Bologna by its simplicity and plainness, John 
says the crowd were all weeping, and men who had 
hated each other until they were ready to shed 
each other's blood, fell upon each other's necks 
and forgave past enmities, and as Francis passed 
out of that little place that afternoon thousands 
of people knelt down to kiss the very hem of his 
frayed brown robe as he went by. Christ was 
born again. There was a man who lived as a Christ 
among his brethren. Francis became a great 
reviver of the church, and here, after all these 
centuries, we feel the thrill and the heart-throb 
of the uplift of the life of Francis. The secret of 
it all was that he fed upon Jesus Christ so com- 
pletely that his life became vital with the spirit 
of J esus. The supreme need of our own time and 



268 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

of our city is that not only the preachers but the 
laymen shall so feed upon Jesus that our indi- 
vidual personal lives, lived for the most part in 
humble and secular places, shall be throbbing and 
thrilling with the spiritual vitality of Jesus, so 
that homes, and stores, and offices, and manufac- 
turing places, all through the city, shall be honey- 
combed with the heavenly vitality imparted by 
true-hearted men and women who daily feed upon 
J esus Christ as the Bread from Heaven. 

Ill 

Jesus Christ is the only food which gives abid- 
ing peace and comfort to the soul. After all, the 
great search of the world is after peace and com- 
fort. Men slave for money, and crawl on their 
knees to get power, because they imagine that, 
somehow, in these ways they will find the still 
greater prizes, peace and comfort. But the peace 
which the world can give is a very poor affair at 
best. Alexander Maclaren puts it well when he 
says that it is a shallow, thin plating over a depth 
of restlessness, like some skin turf on a volcano, 
where a foot below the surface sulphurous fumes 
roll and hellish turbulence seethes. The world 
has no true peace to sell. Go back through all the 
history of mankind and you will find that men 
have tried it in its pleasures, politics, commerce, 
literature, and science. They have sought in all 



THE TRUE FOOD OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 269 



these and found it not. We know both by the con- 
fessions of the dead and of the living that neither 
money, culture, place, nor power can bring peace 
to the soul. 

Peace must spring from underneath, from 
within. It must come from roots that are fed 
far away out of sight. Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
in one of the last and happiest parables he ever 
wrote, tells us the true nature of a tree. He 
tells us that these great fluttering masses of leaves, 
stems, boughs, trunks are not real trees. The real 
tree lives under ground, and what we see is 
nothing more or less than its tail. Holmes says 
the tree is an underground creature with its tail 
in the air. All its intelligence is in its roots ; all 
the sense it has is in its roots. Think what sagac- 
ity it shows in its search after food and drink! 
Somehow or other the rootlets, which are its ten- 
tacles, find out that there is a brook at a moderate 
distance from the trunk of the tree, and they 
make for it with all their might. They find every 
crag in the rocks where there are a few grains of 
the nourishing substance they care for, and insinu- 
ate themselves into its deepest recesses. When 
spring and summer come they let their tails grow 
and delight in whisking them about in the wind, 
or letting them be whisked about by it ; for these 
tails are poor, passive things with very little will 
of their own, and bend in whatever direction the 



270 THE GEE AT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

wind chooses to make them. All the gorgeous 
expanse of plumage, all the beauty and glory of 
the tree, as we see it, depends entirely upon the 
food which the roots find hidden away out of sight. 

The Christian life is like that. You see a life 
like Paul's, or like John's, which is never dis- 
obedient unto the heavenly vision. Outside there 
is only abuse and hardship and imprisonment 
and cruel persecution. How is such a life of faith 
and love and fragrant spirituality grown in such 
an atmosphere ? But when you question them you 
find that, like the tree, the real life of these great 
and wonderful men is "hid with Christ in God." 
They feed upon Jesus, and their hearts are com- 
forted, and they have the peace of God that passeth 
all understanding. Dear friends, this is the open 
secret of the Christian life. There is no such 
peace as Christ can give. Neither does it take a 
great man nor a genius to find the way to it. 

S. D. Gordon was riding on horseback in one 
of the Southern States when he came on an old 
log cabin, almost fallen in pieces, and in the door- 
way an old black mammy was standing. Her back 
was bent nearly double with the years of hard 
work, her face deeply wrinkled, and her crinkly 
wool as white as snow, but her eyes were as bright 
as two stars out of the dark blue. He called out, 
cheerily : "Good morning, auntie. Living here all 
alone ?" 



THE TRUE FOOD OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 271 

She looked up with her eyes brighter yet with 
the thought in her heart, arid in a shrill, high- 
keyed voice said, "Jes' me'n Jesus, massa." 

A hush came over the place. There seemed a 
halo about the old broken-down cabin, and the trav- 
eler thought he could see Somebody standing by 
her side looking over her shoulder at him, and his 
form was like that of the Son of God. The poet 
had the same thought as the old black woman when 
he sang: 

I cannot do it alone, 

The waves run fast and high, 
And the fogs close chill around, 

And the light goes out in the sky; 
But I know that we two 
Shall win in the end — 
Jesus and I. 

I cannot row it myself, 

My boat on the raging sea; 
But beside me sits Another 

Who pulls or steers with me, 
And I know that we two 
Shall come safe into port — 
His child and he. 

Coward and wayward and weak, 
I change with the changing sky. 

To-day so eager and brave, 
To-morrow not caring to try; 

But he never gives in, 

So we two shall win — 
Jesus and I. 



272 



THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



Strong and tender and true, 

Crucified once for me! 
Never will he change, I know, 

Whatever I may be! 
But all he says I must do, 

Ever from sin to keep free. 
We shall finish our course 

And reach home at last — 
His child and he. 



CHAPTER XXI 

The Kinsmen of Jesus Christ 

Whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in 
heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother. — Matt. 
12. 50 (Am. Rev. Yer.). 

Christ was in the midst of one of his great 
sermons, a sermon in parables. Even while he 
spoke, and the great crowd listened, full of atten- 
tive interest, one came to him and told him that 
his immediate family, consisting of his mother 
and his brothers, were waiting outside the 
crowd for speech with him, and Christ, full of 
the great thoughts which he had been illustrating 
in parables to the listening multitudes, supremely 
conscious of the spiritual realities of the higher 
kinship of souls, replied to the messenger by say- 
ing, "Who is my mother ? and who are my breth- 
ren?" And then he turned from the man who 
had brought him the word, and looked out over the 
crowd, stretching his hand forth to his audience, 
and especially toward his disciples, who had been 
following him and learning something of his 
spirit until their hearts were growing into a one- 
ness with his, and said: "Behold, my mother and 
my brethren ! Eor whosoever shall do the will of 
my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, 
and sister, and mother." 

273 



274 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



I 

The strongest note in the Bible is the cry of 
the heart of God, offering love to us and asking for 
our love in return, Lyman Abbott truly says that 
if we will turn to the Old Testament, we will see 
how God calls sometimes for service, and some- 
times for soldiers, but most of all for lovers. The 
cry of the old Bible is the cry of the heart of 
the Father aching for the heart of his child. And 
when we come into the New Testament it throbs 
and sometimes sobs with this same great cry. 
When Christ stood by the Sea of Galilee on that 
summer morning with Peter and asked him again 
and again, "Simon, son of Jonah, dost thou love 
me ?" it was not as an inquisitor putting a sinner 
on the rack for wickedness performed; it was a 
hungry heart asking a friend and rejoicing in the 
response, "Yes, I do love you," and wanting some- 
thing better than Peter's answer, "I am your 
friend," and asking again and yet again that he 
might get from Peter the word that Peter had not 
the courage to utter, "I love you — I love you." 

A while ago in Canada, when they had very 
severe weather, and the cold was so extreme that 
there was much suffering in the great towns, and 
in some of the larger cities, the municipal authori- 
ties had huge fires built in the streets, that the 
poor people might gather around them and enjoy 
the genial warmth and have the frost taken out of 



THE KINSMEN OF JESUS CHRIST 275 

their freezing limbs. What a picture that is of 
what happened to the world when Jesus Christ 
came forth from the loving heart of God and 
moved amid the streets of mankind ! He was like 
a great fire of kindness and love, around which the 
multitude gathered for cheer and warmth. And 
ever since men have been gathering about that 
fire, drawing near to that heavenly flame, and 
frozen human nature has been thawing into 
brotherhood and fellowship. What is our mis: 
sionary work in heathen lands but the building of 
great hearth-fires to thaw out frozen humanity 
with the warmth that comes in the revelation of 
God in Christ Jesus ? 

> * 11 

Christ declares the one condition of kinship to 
him to be obedience to God. If we yield ourselves 
to do the will of the Father, then we become the 
kinsmen of Jesus Christ, The spiritual kinship 
supersedes the physical, and it always hinges on 
obedience to God. 'No mere culture, however bril- 
liant, can take the place of genuine, sincere 
obedience to the will of our heavenly Father. 

Dr. Hillis points out, in one of his sermons, 
that there is a culture that stops short of obedience 
and of the surrender of the will to the laws of 
God, just as there are trees that blossom, but fall 
short of bringing forth fruit. History is full of ex- 



276 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

amples of scholars in whom conscience was life- 
less. Solomon was the wisest man of his day, 
but also the wickedest. Alcibiades was the most 
brilliant pupil of Socrates, but he was also a 
scoundrel and a traitor. Lorenzo de Medici was 
a poet, an orator, a soldier, a man of letters, the 
most cultured man of his time ; he also told lies, 
poisoned his enemies, murdered his friends, and 
finally destroyed the liberty of his country. He 
wore his intellectual culture over a corrupt heart, 
as Naaman wore a purple robe over a leprous 
body. Moral culture, like intellectual culture, 
may be only skin-deep, just as the traveler climb- 
ing Vesuvius through beautiful orchards and gar- 
dens is told by the guide that the soil is only 
spade-deep. All about him are vineyards and fig 
orchards and rich blossoms and springs of water, 
but all the while there is an undertone of rum- 
bling, and here and there is a crack that emits hot 
steam, and near by is a boiling spring. The trav- 
eler climbing upward is always conscious that 
beneath his feet lies a lake of fire that at any 
moment may break out, to bury some town or 
vineyard. And as he looks back across the uncov- 
ered ruin of Pompeii he remembers how the once 
live and beautiful city, rich in wealth and all the 
signs of outer culture, but steeped in hidden vices, 
was overwhelmed by the seething revolt of this 
same Vesuvius. Cultivated habits of piety may 



THE KIISTSMEN OF JESUS CHRIST 277 

be equally as superficial. Our knowledge of Christ 
and of God must be transmuted into obedience 
to the will of God before we become the kinsmen 
of Jesus Christ. 

We are not the kinsmen of Jesus because we 
know much of the Bible, because we have been 
trained in ecclesiastical forms, or because we have 
been so hedged about by the habits and customs 
of Christian civilization that we travel in their 
grooves as a traveler across the prairie takes the 
same rut along which other travelers have driven. 
We may have all these evidences of Christianity 
and yet have no spiritual kinship with Jesus 
Christ. Some of you who have read those old 
novels of Sir Walter Scott will recall Old Mortal- 
ity. How he was to be found on lonely moors in 
Scotland, seeking the neglected graves of the 
Covenanters, rubbing the moss from the tombstones, 
and with chisel and mallet reinscribing their 
names — a quaint, pious task. But when it was 
done, Old Mortality had not made the bones stir 
beneath the sod, and he had not brought back the 
spirit of Scotland's heroes to their native land. 
It is possible for us in the most careful and 
scholarly and critical way to study the story of 
Jesus Christ in our Sunday schools and in our 
Bible classes, and yet be doing nothing more than 
reinscribing the legend of a dead Christ. If we 
are to be the kinsmen of Jesus, we must meet with 



278 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

him shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart in 
doing the will of God. 

The kinsman of Jesus Christ must make obe- 
dience to God the supreme passion of his life. 
Henry van Dyke, in the preface to his book 
entitled "The Ruling Passion/' says that in every 
life there is a ruling passion, the very pulse of 
the imagination. Unless you touch thgt, you are 
groping around outside of reality. Music, nature, 
children, honor, strife, revenge, money, pride, 
friendship, loyalty, duty — to these objects and to 
others like them the secret power of personal 
passion often turns, and the life unconsciously 
follows it as the tides in the sea follow the moon 
in the sky. Now, if you study the life of Jesus 
Christ, you will find that the ruling passion is 
to do the will of God. When he had fed his 
hungry body at the well of Sychar by bringing a 
poor, sinful woman not only to know her sins but 
to catch a glimpse of the possibilities of forgive- 
ness of sin and salvation, he said to his disciples, 
"I have meat to eat that ye know not." And when 
they wondered about it, he said, "My meat is to 
do the will of him that sent me, and to accomplish 
his work." There, O my friends, is where we 
shall enter into the royal family of Jesus Christ, 
when doing the will of God, pleasing our heavenly 
Father, becomes our very meat and drink and 
is indeed the ruling passion by which we live. 



THE KINSMEN OF JESUS CHRIST 279 

/ / 

III 

When we thus enter into this genuine kinship 
with Jesus Christ, both we ourselves and our work 
are exalted and glorified. The man who really 
enters into that consciousness that he is the spirit- 
ual brother of Jesus Christ, cannot feel meanly 
about his own nature. He is the child of a King. 
He bears the likeness of God. He is conscious 
that in his heart and spirit there throb the same 
spirit and life as beat in the breast of Jesus of 
Nazareth when he went about doing good. It 
does not make us conceited, because it is not our 
life, but it is Christ Jesus that liveth in us, and 
our work is at once glorified because of the fellow- 
ship in which we labor. 

A lady was once standing in front of that 
splendid Cathedral at Cologne when she heard 
some one behind her say, "Didn't we do a fine 
piece of work here ?" Turning, she saw a man in 
the plainest working-clothes, and said to him, 
"Pray, what did you do about it ?" 

"I mixed the mortar across the street for two 
years," was the cheerful reply. 

God's work to-day needs cheerful, patient, and 
diligent mortar-mixers. Mixing mortar is no 
doubt one of the hardest and most disagreeable 
things to do in rearing a building. But what 
sort of a building could be made without mortar ? 
Then a man should thank God and take courage if 



280 THE GEE AT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

his lot is cast among tie mortar-mixers. It was 
something like this that the sacred writer had in 
his mind when he wrote, "Whatsoever ye do, do it 
heartily as to the Lord, and not unto men." When 
we work in fellowship with Christ and are con- 
scious that we are his spiritual kinsmen, the scars 
we win are marks of honor. Dr. Hallock tells of a 
man whom he knew who was so crippled that he 
could walk only with unsteady steps. There was 
upon his face a look as if he were in constant pain 
and weakness, and his features were disfigured also 
with scars. But these blights and scars were for 
him the insignia of the noblest honor. He had 
been a soldier fighting for his country's flag. In 
a gallant charge he had greatly distinguished him- 
self ; but he received wounds from which he never 
recovered. He never knew a well day again. He 
must henceforth bear the marks of that heroism. 
Yet he was not ashamed, but proud of them. He 
knew they were brands of honor. He could well 
have said, in the very spirit of our theme, "Hence- 
forth let no man trouble me, or question my loy- 
alty to duty, for I bear in my body the ineffaceable 
marks of my patriotism." Paul was a much- 
scarred man. He had had trouble on every side 
and of almost every kind. But all of it had come 
to him as a kinsman of Jesus Christ, doing the 
will of God. Hence he was able to cry, "Hence- 
forth let no man trouble me; for I bear in my 



THE KINSMEN OF JESUS CHRIST 281 

body the marks of the Lord Jesus." God give us 
such marks ! If we must be branded by toil and 
service, let it not be as mere money-getters, as 
mere pleasure-seekers, as mere runners after 
applause ; but let us be branded as the brothers 
and sisters of Jesus Christ in the burdens we bear 
for humanity and in the consolation we bring to 
the weak and the sorrowing. 

IV 

If we become in deed and in truth Christ's kins- 
men, we come into his attitude toward humanity. 
We see men and women with Christ's eyes, and 
we see in them what others do not see. Dawson, 
the English evangelist, says that when, many 
years ago, the life of Livingstone was published, 
he was greatly impressed by a certain incident 
Livingstone described — of a poor African woman 
lying by the roadside afflicted with a peculiarly 
repulsive disease. The picture was so vivid that 
it made him shudder, for he was at that period 
of youth which is extremely sensitive to pain. 
All sorts of painful sights he shrank from, and 
he wondered how Livingstone could bring himself 
even to touch that dreadful woman by the road- 
side. But he read on, and as he read he came 
across words of such passionate tenderness that 
before he had finished the description he under- 
stood how it was that Livingstone could touch that 



282 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

poor, repulsive woman with her dreadful disease. 
He saw in her a creature for whom Christ died. 
He saw in her a fragment of God himself. He 
recognized the soul, dumb, confused, ignorant, 
unlearned, still an immortal soul to which, in value, 
all the gold of Ophir and all the diamond fields 
of South Africa were as the dust in the balance. 
Surely it was that conviction of the divinity in 
man, and that alone, which could have nerved 
Livingstone for his life of solitary toil among 
savage .races who seemed scarcely human. It 
was possible because he was a kinsman of Jesus. 
And, my friends, it will not be possible for us 
to do our duty in saving the men and women about 
us unless we have this same attitude toward 
humanity and for the same reason. Miracles 
would be wrought in our own church and in our 
city if we could bring ourselves with -supreme 
devotion into this sympathetic relation with our 
fellow men. 

Dr. Broughton, of Atlanta, tells of a minister 
who called his elders together and, because there 
were no souls being saved, tendered his resigna- 
tion of the pastorate. One of them urged him not 
to take that course, because the people were being 
edified. The minister asked, "Edified for what ?" 
and added : "Brother, do you believe that through 
you a soul was ever saved?" 

"No," was the frank reply. 



THE KINSMEN OF JESUS CHRIST 283 

The same question was put to each one present, 
and the same reply was given. At the minister's 
request, they all agreed to resign office with him 
if there were no conversions in the immediate 
future. What was the result ? The next day the 
official first^addressed spoke to his confidential 
clerk. "Bob," said he, "you are not a Christian, 
and I, who am an elder of the church which you 
attend, when you attend anywhere, have never 
spoken to you about your soul. But, Bob, I am 
in earnest now, and I want us to kneel down here 
and give ourselves to Christ, I for fuller consecra- 
tion and you for salvation." The clerk was 
touched by God's Spirit through his employer's 
earnestness, and found Christ. And that business 
man, who had never before led a soul to Jesus, 
was instrumental in the conversion of ten other 
men the same day; and he and his brother elders 
won thirty men to Christ that week ! 

V 

In kinship with Jesus Christ we shall find 
the supreme courage and the supreme joy of liv- 
ing. The highest life can be lived only in the 
inspiration which comes from fellowship with the 
divinest Being who ever wore our human flesh. 
An English naval officer tells a grateful story of 
the way he was helped and saved from dishonor 
in his first experience in battle. He was a mid- 



284 THE GBEAT THEMES Otf THE BIBLE 

shipman, fourteen years old. The volleys of the 
enemy's musketry so terrified him that he almost 
fainted. The officer over him saw his condition, 
and came close beside him, keeping his own face 
toward the enemy, and held the midshipman's 
hand, saying in a calm, quiet, affectionate way: 
"Courage, my boy ! you will recover in a minute 
or two. I was just so when I went into my first 
battle." The young man said afterward that it 
was as if an angel had come to him and put new 
strength into him. The whole burden of his 
agony was gone, and from that moment he was 
as brave as the oldest of the men. If the officer 
had dealt sternly with the boy, he might have 
driven him into cowardly failure. His kindly 
sympathy with him dispelled all fear, put courage 
into his heart, and made him brave for battle. 
But that is a faint image of what Jesus Christ is 
to men and women who are weak and ready to 
faint in the battle of life. He is not only touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities, but he is 
patient with our weaknesses, and comes to us 
again and again with his assuring word, "Be of 
good courage, for I have overcome the world." 

Read again the story of Saint Paul. See again 
the man who listened to the sobs and groans of 
human misery, and took them upon his heart, and 
wore out that most magnificent nature in the 
service of men who had no claim on him, and 



THE KINSMEN OF JESUS CHRIST 285 

you will see him always rejoicing, always full 
of good cheer. It is a law as solid as the universe 
that if a man undertakes to fence out of his heart 
the sorrows of the world, misery will flow un- 
hidden, and, in spite of every break-water that he 
can throw up, through his whole being. Jesus 
uttered the great law when he said, "Whoso loseth 
his life for my sake, shall find it." And any man 
or woman of you who ever lost yourself for 
days or weeks or years for a great cause, will 
bear me testimony that when you forgot yourself 
in some one else's suffering in those experiences 
your life grew deeper and richer and fuller. 

My friends, let us give ourselves as never 
before to be the brother, the sister, the mother of 
Jesus Christ. Let us enter with all our heart's 
love into kinship with him in serving our brothers 
and sisters and in curing the heartache of the 
world. Then we shall know the joy which Christ 
knew, that made it possible for him, in spite of 
the cross which loomed before his eyes, to go for- 
ward with infinite peace. We shall then know that 
the poet was true when he sang: 

Love much. There is no waste in freely giving; 
More blessed is it, even, than to receive. 

He who loves much alone finds life worth living: 
Love on, through doubt and darkness ; and believe 
There is nothing which Love may not achieve. 



CHAPTEK XXII 



Whebe the Shadows Abe White 

In the shadow of his hand hath he hid me.— Is a. 
49. 2. 

I Some years ago a little company of American 
artists were living on the Island of Ischia in the 
beautiful Bay of Naples. It was a winter para- 
dise and they reveled in its glorious skies, rare 
visions of the sea, and abundance of fruits and 
flowers. One of these artists, a young lady, tell- 
ing the story of their winter, says that from the 
beginning of their coming to the island they had 
heard perpetually of a mysterious personage 
known as "Madame Teresa." Everyone they met 
was sure, sooner or later, to speak of her. From 
visitors, peasants, poor people, beggars, servants, 
the priests, and the doctors, in all parts of the 
island, they were always hearing of "Madame 
Teresa." The poor people called her "Madonna," 
with almost as much reverence as if they were 
speaking of the real one. No one at the great hotel 
where they were stopping seemed to have met her, 
and the young ladies wondered why they did not 
meet her, why they never saw her on the street, or 
taking long walks over the mountains, or on 
horseback. They had never known of a person of 

286 



WHERE THE SHADOWS ARE WHITE 287 

whom one heard so much and yet of whom nobody 
ever gave you any definite facts. 

One day one of the ladies was off with a party 
on an exploration, and when she came back she 
said she had called on Madame Teresa. 

"What does she look like?" asked the other 
lady. 

Her friend was in a teasing mood, and would 
answer her nothing, but promised, if the next day 
were pleasant, she would take her there to see for 
herself ; and so on the morrow they went to make 
the call. They paused before an old house which 
stood entirely surrounded by trees and shrubbery. 
The door was soon opened by a cheery-faced 
woman in a white peasant's cap. At the foot of 
the stairs they met two peasant boys whom they 
recognized, and when they stopped to speak with 
them, the boys said they had been to see Madame 
Teresa to have a quarrel settled, and now were 
departing amicably. They followed the servant 
up the staircase to an upper hall, which seemed 
to be a sort of inner garden, with vines trained 
over the walls, and birds hanging in cages, sing- 
ing merrily, and plants and flowers everywhere. 
Here a door to the left was opened and they passed 
into a large, bright room, its frescoed ceiling 
painted like the sky, with feathery clouds upon 
its surface, and the floor covered with luxurious 
rugs. "No one advanced to meet them, but as they 



288 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

stepped forward they saw on a couch, by one of the 
windows, resting on soft red cushions, a little 
shrunken figure, partially covered with an afghan, 
with withered white hands folded patiently 
together — the Madame Teresa of whom the young 
lady had heard so much. Then she knew why 
they had never met her in the streets, or on their 
walks, why the rough peasant boys spoke of her 
with a touch of tenderness in their voices : because 
her life was enshrouded by the mystery of pain. 
She was introduced by her friend, and, suddenly, 
as Madame Teresa smiled her greeting, the room 
seemed full of soft and subdued sunlight. Madame 
Teresa had been shut in within those four walls for 
thirty years, knowing hardly a moment's freedom 
from pain. But Madame in those years had brought 
the outside world in unto her, and to her feet, 
until she had become an unseen power on the 
island, and wielded as strong an influence in her 
way as any sceptered queen on royal throne. 
It was a refining influence in itself to be allowed 
to remain in such a room for any length of time. 
True, the room was full of birds and flowers, of 
beautiful faces looking down from old Floren- 
tine frames on the wall, of strong colors lighting 
corners which might otherwise have been dark; 
but the chief center of attraction was Madame 
Teresa herself. She was a part of the brightness 
of the charming room, a part of its delicate refine^ 



WHERE THE SHADOWS ABE WHITE 289 



raent, of its color and light. After you had talked 
with her awhile it could be with no feeling of 
pity that you looked down into that thin, white 
face to meet the straightforward glance of her 
expressive eyes, now gleaming with enthusiasm 
while she talked quickly in a low voice which had 
something in it of the musical echo of far-off 
bells ; now with eyelids half drooped over her eyes, 
which had a patient, brave expression in them 
that told the story of pain conquered and nerves 
heroically controlled. 

Madame Teresa thanked the young artist for 
coming to see her, told her many facts about the 
island, and quaint legends and funny stories about 
the people; and finally, pointing out through the 
window, said: "Here I lie, day after day, and 
look out yonder where the trees make a green 
archway against the sky. I call it the 'Gate 
Beautiful,' and my eyes, the only things I possess 
which can travel, can go no farther ; so I lie before 
it every day, wondering a little sometimes of what 
lies beyond." 

As the young lady turned away from the window 
her eyes caught sight of something which gave 
her, she thought, the keynote to Madame Teresa's 
brightness, for hanging where her eyes could at all 
times rest upon it, was a picture of Christ as the 
light of the world, and painted below in old Eng- 
lish lettering the inscription : 



290 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

In Thy Light may we see Thee, 

The true Light. 
With Thy Love, love Thee. 
Let there be but one will between us, 

And that Thy Will, 
And one heart between us, 

And that Thine own. 

As they were about to take their departure 
they asked Madame Teresa if they should not tell 
her maid to bring in the lights, so they should not 
leave her alone in the dark, but Madame laughed 
and said she was never alone. "It is always noon 
with me. When shadows come, and I do not like 
them, I always think of bright lights," she added, 
with her wonderful smile, and, suddenly, spite 
of the twilight, the room again seemed full of 
light. 

On their walk home the young lady, who tells 
the story, was asked by her friend what she thought 
of Madame Teresa. Her answer was: "A little 
white shadow. Do you remember what you said 
the other day as we came through the vineyards 
at noontide, and looked down at the town and bay, 
how 'even the shadows themselves are white at 
this hour of the day' ? This afternoon that came 
back to me with such strange force in connection 
with Madame Teresa, as she said just before we 
left, that it was always noon with her." 

I have told you this beautiful story in so much 
detail because in it there is illustrated and enforced 



WHERE THE SHADOWS ARE WHITE 291 

any sermon which might be preached on our 
theme. Our text assures us that it is possible for 
every one of us to live in that atmosphere where 
all the shadows of life grow white. "God is light, 
and in him is no darkness at . all," and if we are 
hidden in the shadow of his hand, we know that 
the shadow which covers us is white. ^ 

I 

Even the shadow of guilt becomes white when 
we are hidden in God's hand. God says through 
Isaiah: "Come now, and let us reason together, 
saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, 
they shall be as white as snow; though they be 
red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Many 
of you have looked upon that angry cloud with its 
crimson and scarlet lines that seemed about to 
send forth their lightnings in punishment, but 
when in penitence you crept under the shadow of 
God's hand through faith in Jesus Christ, and 
looked back upon the cloud, all the threatening 
colors that seemed so full of doom, and aroused 
in your heart such apprehension of judgment to 
come, had vanished away, and instead of threat 
and anger and premonitions of punishment the 
cloud was illuminated, and across it there was the 
span of the rainbow of mercy and love, the promise 
of protection and guidance. And there is not a 
man or a woman here this morning whose cloud 



292 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

of guilt is so dark and angry but what you may, 
through the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ, 
slip into the shadow of God's hand and find all the 
shadow of guilt turned white with love. 

II 

Then there is the shadow of doubt, a dark and 
cruel shadow to many hearts ; but that will grow 
white if we live under the white shadow of God's 
hand. Jude's plan of escape from doubt was, 
"Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for 
the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal 
life." Jesus said, "My teaching is not mine, but 
his that sent me. If any man willeth to do his 
will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be 
of God." That is, if we keep close to God, under 
the shadow of his hand guiding us, we shall not 
doubt the path. We shall see clearly. If we keep 
ourselves day by day in the love of God, through 
obedience, there will be no doubt. Doubt is born 
of separation and lack of love. I was reading a 
cynical writer not long ago, who said that every 
marriage was one-sided, that there was always one 
who loved and one who was loved. Of course, if 
his words were true, there could be no abiding 
happiness in wedded life. Disillusion would 
come sooner or later. As soon as it was discovered 
that the love was one-sided — all the giving on one 
side, all the receiving on the other— the charm 



WHERE THE SHADOWS ARE WHITE 293 

would be broken and the union of hearts would 
be at an end. 

But the love story of God and the human heart 
is too often a one-sided story. The failure is 
never on God's part. "He that spared not his own 
Son, but .delivered him up for us all, how shall he 
not with him also freely give us all things ?" All 
failure of perfect peace and confidence lies in the 
half-hearted response, the imperfect surrender on 
our part, and not in any failure on God's part. 

Ill 

The shadow of fear also loses its darkness and 
its threat and grows white when we live in the 
shadow of God's hand. You remember the story 
in the Acts of the Apostles which tells of Paul's 
sea voyage, when on his way to Rome as a prisoner 
on the Alexandrian corn ship they were caught in 
a fierce winter storm, and for days and nights 
all on board had lost hope save Paul. And one 
morning he stood out before them, the captain, the 
sailors and the soldiers, and with a bright, buoyant 
face said to them: "I exhort you to be of good 
cheer : for there shall be no loss of any man's life 
among you, but of the ship. For there stood by 
me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and 
whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul ; thou must 
be brought before Caesar : and, lo, God hath given 
thee all them that sail with thee. Wherefore, sirs, 



294 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



be of good cheer : for I believe God, that it shall be 
even as it was told me," My friends, your fears 
shall vanish away, and your faces grow bright and 
buoyant, and your hearts be full of courage for the 
daily struggles of life, if you keep yourselves in the 
shadow of God's hand as did PauL 
/ John says, "There is no fear in love ; but per- 
fect love casteth out fear: because fear hath tor- 
ment. He that feareth is not made perfect in 
love." That makes the escape from fear very 
simple. If we live day by day in loving fellow- 
ship with Jesus Christ our Saviour, we shall have 
no fear. If we are close to Christ in our thoughts 
and deeds, then the fragrance of his love banishes 
fear. Campbell Morgan says that he once went 
into the home of a gentleman who was entertain- 
ing him, and in one room he always detected the 
fragrance of roses, and he said to his host one day, 
"I wish you would tell me how it is that I never 
come into this room without seeming to detect the 
fragrance of roses." 

The gentleman smiled and said: "Ten years 
ago I was in the Holy Land, and while there I 
bought a small phial of attar of roses. It was 
wrapped in cotton wool, and as I was standing 
here unpacking it, suddenly I broke the bottle. 
I took the whole thing up, cotton wool and all, and 
put it into this vase." There stood a beautiful vase, 
and he lifted the lid, and the fragrance of roses 



WHERE THE SHADOWS ABE WHITE 295 

filled the room. That fragrance had permeated the 
clay of the vase, and it was impossible to enter the 
room without consciousness of it. My friends, if 
Christ be in us, the fragrance of the Rose of 
Sharon will pervade and permeate our whole life. 
All that kind of fear that hath torment will dis- 
appear, and the love which beautifies and glori- 
fies human living shall possess us, and make us a 
comfort and a blessing to all whose lives touch our 
own. \ 

IV 

The shadow of sorrow will whiten in the pres- 
ence of God's hand. Jesus said to his disciples 
that sorrow was a necessary part of human life, 
but it did not have to stay dark. He said to them, 
"In the world ye shall have tribulation : but be of 
good cheer ; I have overcome the world." Though 
we must needs have sorrows from time to time, 
we may have peace in Jesus under the shadow of 
God's hand. | Sorrow is often more beneficial to 
us than pleasure. A gentleman was one night 
walking, with his little niece, down the street of 
a city which for some distance was brightly illumi- 
nated with small colored lights among the shade 
trees. The little girl was delighted with the bril- 
liant scene, but presently, looking up into the sky, 
she exclaimed, "Uncle, I cannot see the stars." 
And so it is often true that continued experience 
of the pleasures of life so dazzles our eyes that we 



296 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

cannot see the lights of heaven above our head. 
But the blackness, the bitterness, of sorrow disap- 
pears if we keep close to God. It is always a 
heartening thing to follow the story of Paul. 
What sorrows he had! And yet his shadows of 
sorrow always were white.^ When he was put into 
prison after being beaten, his praise to God con- 
verted the jailer; when he had an evil disease, 
that was like a thorn in the flesh, he could thank 
God that it only brought out the better the grace 
of God ; when they sent him to Rome, a prisoner, 
he rejoiced and said, "This is that I may be a 
missionary to Caesar's household." If Paul ever 
murmured, and no doubt he did sometimes, he 
was so close to God, under the shadow of his hand, 
that he murmured into the ear of his Father. 
"Ian Maclaren" once said that if any man has a 
quarrel with God, let him have the quarrel out, 
but not upon the street or with strangers— let him 
have it out with God. They say the safest place 
on a battleship, when the guns are firing, is behind 
them, and the best place when the will of God has 
brought sorrow to you is close to God's heart. It 
is there that the shadows will grow white, and the 
peace of God will come upon us. Remember that 
it is in God's hand, and not in ours, where our 
sorrows must lose their bitterness and their black- 
ness. How oft would relief come to our sorrowing 
hearts if we would only pause to consider that it 



WHERE THE SHADOWS ARE WHITE 297 

is not our hand that will save, not our foresight 
that will prevent a calamity, and not our power 
that will uphold us in the hour of stress. No, it 
is in God's hand that we may rest in peace^ Fred- 
erick Shannon beautifully voices this sweet con- 
fidence : 

To-night, my soul, be still and sleep; 
The storms are raging on God's deep — 
God's deep, not thine; be still and sleep. 

To-night, my soul, be still and sleep; 

God's hands shall still the tempest's sweep — 

God's hands, not thine; be still and sleep. 

To-night, my soul, be still and sleep; 

God's love is strong while night hours creep — 

God's love, not thine; be still and sleep. 

To-night, my soul, be still and sleep; 

God's heaven will comfort those who weep — 

God's heaven, and thine; be still and sleep. 

V 

Even the shadow of death loses all its terrors 
when we are close to God. How confidently David 
sings in his Shepherd Psalm, "Though I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will 
fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and 
thy staff they comfort me." 

No man who has seen as much of the shadow 
of death as I have will ever make light of it. It 
is indeed a dark shadow. It fell over my house 



298 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

one day, and a noble boy, my firstborn son, the 
light and the gladness of the household, faded out 
of our sight. And though more than twenty years 
have passed since I stood under that shadow, a 
hundred times a year, when I am alone, my heart 
grows tender and my eyes fill with tears in mem- 
ory of that day. But, thank God, the blackness 
of the shadow has long since passed away. The 
shadow has grown white, for now I feel and know 
that though out of my earthly presence that sweet 
song bird has flown, and sings there no more, still 
it sits in the Tree of Life and sings, and I shall 
hear it again. 

I know that many of you know what the shadow 
of death means, but I say to all of you who are 
under the shadow that seems dark, Keep close to 
God and the darkness shall have illumination. 
Heaven is not far away to those who are hid in the 
shadow of God's hand, and immortality is sure 
to those who live the higher life of love and faith 
amid earth's shadows. 

So in the midst of all the shadows that life or 
death can bring to us, if we maintain our confi- 
dence in God, we may sing: 

In the center of the circle 

Of the will of God I stand; 
Where can come no second causes; 

All must come from his dear hand. 
All is well! for 'tis my Father 

Who my life hath planned! 



WHERE THE SHADOWS ARE WHITE 



299 



Shall I pass through waves of sorrow? 

Then I know it will be best, 
Though I cannot tell the reason 

I can trust, and so am blest. 
God is love, and God is faithful, 

So in perfect peace I rest. 

With the shade and with the sunshine, 
With the joy and with the pain, 

Lord, I trust thee! both are needed 
Each thy wayward child to train. 

Earthly loss, did we but know it, 
Ofttimes means our heavenly gain. 



CHAPTER XXIII 



The Value of the Mysterious 

And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my 
lord, what shall be the issue of these things? And he 
said, Go thy way, Daniel. — Dan. 12. 8, 9 (Am. Rev. Ver.J. 

The vital power of religion is not to be found 
in carefully prepared creeds or well-defined state- 
ments, however logical, but . in the mysterious, 
invisible spiritual realities. Daniel had been talk- 
ing with an angel who had set before his vision 
wonderful scenes, and recited in his ears mar- 
velous revelations, and though he had heard and 
seen, he confesses he had not understood one whit, 
and yet through such revelations oft-repeated, 
which left Daniel as much in the dark as ever 
concerning the closed and sealed future, there was 
developed in Daniel a man of moral might and 
power. It was like a bath in unseen realities. It 
was a breath from the upper sky. It left with 
him a consciousness of angelic messengers and 
made real to him the presence of the living God in 
the world. These experiences all wrought together 
to make a man who at last could go down into the 
den of lions without fear. 

In an age when we are under constant temp- 
tation to become secular and earthly, it is wise 
for us ever and again to recall the fact that the 

300 



THE VALUE OF THE MYSTERIOUS 301 

greatest of all the forces with which we have to 
do are unseen and mysterious. And this is true 
about physical things as well as spiritual. Joseph 
Parker in his vivid style says: "Who would be 
without mystery % Who would have an earth with- 
out a sky? It would not be worth having. Yet 
the earth is under foot and comparatively man- 
ageable; we can dig it, plow it, put stones into 
it with a view to putting up a house. But tlie 
sky no man has touched. The §ky is the best part 
of us. We get all our vegetables out of the sky, 
though we think we do not. All the flowers are 
out of the sun, though we think we planted them." 
The poet sings with true insight when he tells us 
that 

Beneath the cover of the sod 
The lily heard the call of God; 
Within its bulb so strangely sweet 
Answering pulse began to beat 
The earth lay darkly damp and cold, 
And held the smell of grave and mold, 
But never did the lily say, 
"O who shall roll the stone away?" 
It heard the call, the call of God, 
And up through prison house of sod 
It came from burial place of gloom 
To find its perfect life in bloom. 

Dr. Brierly, the English essayist, with keen 
perception says that while to the mass of men the 
material universe represents the solid, substantial 
actuality of things, the truth is that the invisible 



302 THE GBEAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

and unseen are far more substantial. And a little 
consideration will show us how true this is. We 
walk through a city and observe its buildings. 
What are they ? So much stone and lime, iron and 
timber ? If that were all, they would not be build- 
ings, but rubbish heaps. Their principal ingre- 
dient is not matter, but thought. These structures 
are, in fact, embodied ideas. The inner life of 
the capitalist, the architect, the contractor, the 
artist who constructed and embellished them; 
their desire, their will, their education and taste 
are here made visible. The wood and stone are 
penetrated throughout with mind, and tell the 
story of it to all who can see and hear. But some 
buildings have much more to say than that. 
Three years ago I went over to the West, and 
among the foothills in Oregon I stood beside a 
little story-and-a-half frame building. It was old 
and weather-beaten and comparatively worthless. 
Most of the windows were gone, the roof was 
ragged, and it looked very small to me in compari- 
son with what it did when I moved into it as a 
child with my father and mother more than forty 
years before. To a stranger that old house was 
simply a pile of almost worthless second-hand 
building material. But I stood there beside it 
under the stress of great emotion. I saw again 
that happy day when the family moved out of 
the old hewn log-house into this, the then new 



THE VALUE OF THE MYSTERIOUS 303 

home; I saw the great logs burning in the fire- 
place; I saw my father, long since in heaven, as 
he sat reading for the evening worship from the 
old family Bible. I saw the sweet face of my 
mother sitting in the firelight in the glow of her 
young womanhood. I saw the childish faces of 
my sisters, one of whom is a grandmother now, as 
they looked up in childish wonder and listened 
with me to the message, as it fell from my father's 
lips, as he read from that holy book. I knelt 
again with that little group of loving and happy 
souls and heard again the simple prayer of the 
man who stood in my eyes in those days as the 
highest emblem of God. And so I stood beside the 
old house with bared head, and eyes full of tears, 
and heart swelling with thoughts too sacred to 
utter, while all the rest of the group looked at it 
with only more or less curiosity. What made the 
difference ? The house was what it was to me 
because it was rich with deposits of the unseen. 
It was saturated with the inner life of those whom 
I had loved and who are gone, and those whom I 
love who still remain. The dead matter of that 
time-worn building, ugly enough to strangers, was 
to me beautiful and sacred because of its alliance 
with unseen, mysterious, spiritual realities. 

The discussion of our theme reaches its highest 
level when we come into the domain of religion. 
Some one says that some persons think that if 



304 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

they understand religion they have got it. But 
no man can understand religion. Religion was 
never meant to be understood; it was meant to 
be felt, a secret, subtle, infinite fire. Religion is 
a climate, not an overcoat. When your life laughs 
aloud with new joy, springs up to do heroic service, 
goes out to seek opportunities of doing good, 
then know that God is at work in your soul, and 
never mind what you understand. The man who 
lifts his heart to heaven in prayer, who rises up 
into communion with the infinite God, so that, 
like Paul, he feels that his soul is lifted out of 
the body into the third heaven of inspiration and 
vision, does not understand it. Paul did not 
understand it any more than Daniel did his vision. 
And yet he was a better man, as Daniel was, and 
as every man and woman of us are, who, whether 
through joy or sorrow, come into a like experience. 
Such an one has a roomier nature, a keener fancy, 
a larger life. The disciples who witnessed the 
transfiguration of Christ on the mountaintop did 
not understand it, but they were larger, nobler, 
finer men forever afterward because of that moun- 
taintop experience. 

Dr. James Denney, a man of the deepest spirit- 
ual insight and one of the greatest Bible students 
of our day, declares that careful study of the 
Gospels has brought into high relief the fact that 
the kingdom of God as Jesus conceived it is a 



THE VALUE OF THE MYSTERIOUS 305 

transcendent kingdom, not of this world, which 
comes suddenly, like a thief in the night, or like 
the lightning flash which illumines the sky in an 
instant from east to west. We have not to work 
for it or set it up by our efforts; we have to 
wait for it, to be ready for it, to make any sacri- 
fice to secure our entrance into it. There is some- 
thing in it which cannot even be suggested except 
by words like heaven and immortality. Such an 
idea of the kingdom of God will deepen in us, I 
think, the conviction that the mighty work of 
the Church of Jesus Christ is spiritual. We must 
not allow the supernatural origin of Christianity 
and its supernatural issues to escape our conscious- 
ness. The Christ in whose name we worship is 
the exalted Christ; there is no faith in him, no 
vision of him, which does not bring immortality 
to light. We weaken the church rather than 
strengthen it when we undertake to entrench it by 
compromises and compacts with secular and 
worldly forces. The Church of J esus Christ must 
retain, in order to its true power in the world, 
that transcendent and heavenly character which it 
bears in the Gospels, but which so readily vanishes 
in the streets. This transcendent and heavenly 
character of the kingdom of God it is essential to 
hold fast if we would be true to Jesus. 

All this it seems to me might give us a profitable 
suggestion as to the great mission of the Christian 



806 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

Church in our time. Multitudes of Christian 
men and women are earnestly and busily engaged 
in these days in bringing about great economical 
and social and moral reforms. What I am to say 
must not for a moment be taken as a criticism 
upon such service for humanity, but I wish to 
call your attention to the important fact that 
Jesus Christ held that the supreme force and 
power of the kingdom of God was something above 
and beyond all this, or, rather, back of all this, 
consisting in an indescribable and mysterious 
brooding tenderness of the Spirit of the living God 
over the hearts and lives of men. Christ lived . in 
the midst of slavery, yet he never set free a single 
slave. Christ never had a vote; he never had 
economic security, and one might make a cata- 
logue of things that were unjust and wrong in his 
day about which ,he said nothing ; but he did bring 
into the midst of that wicked time, and into the 
midst of a formal and Pharisaical religious organi- 
zation, the marvelous, the mysterious, the dis- 
turbing vision of unseen spiritual realities which 
created an atmosphere in which true reforms 
might grow. And is not that forever the supreme 
mission of the Church of Jesus Christ ? It seems 
to me that in our day we can harm the church and 
the world in no way so terribly as to undertake to 
explain away the supernatural and vital reality 
of Christ and his religion in order that we may 



THE VALUE OF THE MYSTERIOUS 307 

understand it, and bring it within the common, 
everyday, logical definitions by which we estimate 
ordinary men and their work. We do not under- 
stand J esus Christ ; he is mysterious ; he is beyond 
our understanding. He is above man. He is 
the Son of God, in some sense which we do not 
understand, different, above, beyond that in which 
any other man is the son of God. There is about 
Christ the mystery and the unfathomable depth 
of the sky. And the religion of Jesus Christ can- 
not be put into definite terms such as we may 
apply to mathematics. Ah, no! The religion of 
J esus Christ is a breath of heaven ; it is an inspi- 
ration, something that is insubstantial, but that, 
somehow, in a way we do not^ understand, gets 
hold of life, and leads it out into the fresh air and 
the pure sunshine, and sends it back into ,the 
market place, and the countingroom, and the law 
office, and the fields, to buy and sell honestly and 
to live mercifully with reverence toward God and 
man. 

II 

We must not fail to bring out another signifi- 
cant message of this incident: Daniel had seen a 
great vision. He had been talked to by the angels 
of God. Something of the greatness and the dig- 
nity of his life has been made known to him. 
But he does not understand it and the magnitude 
of the revelation is too great for him. What shall 



308 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

he do ? And this is the answer given him by the 
messenger from God: "Go thy way, Daniel." 
That ,is, take up the duty that is next to yon. 
Begin where you are and go straight on doing 
the right thing that is at your hand. 

Thomas Carlyle describes the child in the little 
out-of-the-way Entepfuhl village, hanging in lis- 
tening wonder upon the tales of Father Andreas, 
until a dim world of adventure expands within 
him, and, standing by the old men under the 
linden tree as they v discussed the knowledge and 
experience of eighty years, he discovered that 
Entepfuhl village stood in the middle of a 
country, of a world! At the age of eight he woke 
up to the significance of the old stagecoach, saw 
that it came on made highways from far cities 
toward far cities, weaving them like a monstrous 
shuttle into closer and closer union. The boy 
made this reflection : "Any road, this simple Ente- 
pfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the world." 
When that boy grew to be a man he saw how true 
that remark was in spiritual things. Some road 
leads out of the most excluded village, and con- 
nects itself somewhere with the highways of the 
world. And so the simplest path of human duty 
connected with your home or your school or your 
shop leads out to the end of the world in spiritual 
things. You want to be a good man, a noble 
woman, you want to fill your true career as the 



THE VALUE OF THE MYSTERIOUS 309 

servant of Jesus Christ, then "Go thy way" in the 
duty that lies the next step on your path. "What 
shall be the end, the issue of these things ?" said 
Daniel in his great perplexity. "Go thou thy 
way," said the angel on the waters, "for thou shalt 
rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days." 
And so in any confusion or perplexity which life 
holds for you, the same command must apply. 
Go thy way ; take the simple path of duty in com- 
mon things, and know that this lowly path will 
lead you to the end of the world. I once lost my 
way when traveling by horse and buggy over in 
New England, and stopped to inquire of an old 
man hoeing in his garden my way to a certain 
town some fifteen miles distant. The old man 
looked up with a placid smile, and, leaning on 
his hoe handle, said : "I do not know all the way, 
but I can tell you how to get to Turner's Mill, on 
Black, Creek, and when you get there the miller 
can tell you how to go on." I was greatly pleased 
with the old man's directions. It was so much 
wiser than it would have been { to undertake to 
guess out the road for me beyond where he knew. 
He did not know how to guide me all the way 
through, but he knew how to start me. He did not 
know all the way; he did not know all the turn- 
ings I must take nor all the streams I must cross, 
but he knew the direction and he knew how to 
start. So I say to any man or woman among you 



810 THE GBEAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

who has in you the longing for the good life, 
the desire for heaven and immortality: I do not 
know all the strange turnings which there ( may be 
in the journey of life for you, what rivers you'll 
have to cross or deserts to traverse, what crags or 
torrents may be in your way. But I do know that 
if you will take the simple road out of the center 
of your own life, and beginning now will cease to 
do evil and begin to do what God reveals to v be your 
duty, you will find that this path will lead you 
home. In the midst of a thousand things that 
might perplex and confuse you, the path of simple 
right and duty for you is as plain as the street 
that^ runs before your door. Follow that, and you 
will find yourself traveling home to God. Do that, 
and you may have the same assurance in which 
Daniel lived through all his long, stormy, and 
eventful career. While there were many things 
about God and his revelation which he did not 
understand, yet God was ever near him in every 
time of need and emergency. Do your duty ,^ and 
you may confidently pray, with Tennyson: 

Be near me when my light is low, 
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick 
And tingle; and the heart is sick, 

And all the wheels of Being slow. 

Be near me when the sensuous frame 
Is racked with pangs that conquer trust; 
And Time, a maniac scattering dust, 

And Life, a fury slinging flame. 



THE VALUE OF THE MYSTERIOUS 311 

Be near me when my faith is dry, 
And men the flies of latter spring, 
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing 

And weave their petty cells and die. 

Be near me when I fade away, 
To point the term of human strife, 
And on the low dark verge of life 

The twilight of eternal day. 



CHAPTEE XXIV 



A Chain of Blessing 

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make 
his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the 
Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee 
peace.— Num. 6. 24-26. 

I saw the other day, in a newspaper, some 
startling headlines, the first of all being, "A Chain 
of Disaster !" And I have often seen the phrase, 
"A chain of retribution" ; but here we have in six 
links a chain of blessing. Every link is beautiful 
and glorious, and they are welded together with 
such love that we know they can never be pulled 
asunder. 

I 

How beautiful is the first link! "The Lord 
bless thee." It is a sweet thing to be blessed by 
anybody. It is a horrible thing to be cursed, and 
a comforting thing to be blessed even by the 
humblest of beings. We often hear the expression, 
"I would rather have the good will of a dog than 
the ill will." Our meaning there is the same. 
It is better to be blessed than to be cursed. But 
the nobler the personality of the person who 
blesses us, and the more we love and appreciate 
him, the keener we appreciate the blessing. Mr. 

312 



A CHAIN OF BLESSING 



313 



Spurgeon used to say that when he was a young 
preacher he loved to have his grandfather's bless- 
ing on his preaching, and that long after the old 
man had gone home to glory the memory of his 
blessing upon him was a constant delight and com- 
fort. 

There has recently been published a biography 
of John Delane, who was for nearly forty years 
the wise and powerful editor of the London Times. 
It has in it a little human touch that went straight 
to my heart. You must remember that this man 
was a powerful, self-contained, reserved sort of 
man of sixty years of age, and yet this is what he 
says about his mother. He is writing on New 
Year's night: "This year has been in one respect 
a most melancholy one for me. The death of my 
dear mother was a blow which, although in the 
course of nature, found me utterly unprepared. 
I seem to have lost in her a motive for living — so 
much was I accustomed to act as I thought might 
please her, and to take her into account in any- 
thing I said or did. Nobody now cares about me 
or my success, or my motives, and that weariness 
of life I had long felt has been gaining on me ever 
since. In this frame of mind I meet the new 
year, weary both of work and idleness, careless 
about society, and with failing interests." It is 
easy to read here between the lines and see how 
precious was the blessing of his mother on this 



314 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

man's head. If this be true of the blessing of 
father, or mother, or dear friend among our fel- 
lows, how much more preciously it is true when 
he who gives the blessing is our heavenly Father ! 
Our first link in this golden chain is the assurance 
that the eternal attitude of God toward us is one 
of blessing. 

II 

The second link is one of "keeping." "And 
keep thee" is the word of God. There is a beauti- 
ful little touch in Solomon's Song, which is made 
still more beautiful by the Revised Version, in 
which we find this sw T eet and comforting para- 
graph : 

My beloved is mine, and I am his: 

He feedeth his flock among the lilies. 

To the reader who reads simply the surface of 
things there is nothing here suggested but the 
sentimental. It means nothing to the careless 
reader save a beautiful figure of speech; but if 
we dig a little deeper, we may have our hearts 
comforted with a most consoling illustration of 
the keeping power of God. A recent writer, in a 
book entitled "The Fields of France," tells how 
the game preserves in that country often become 
impracticable for the chase owing to the presence 
of sweet flowers. Every May a beautiful fault 
frustrates the sport, for, thick as grass, thick and 
sweet, the lily of the valley springs in all the 



A CHAIN OF BLESSING 



315 



brakes and shady places. The scent of the game 
will not lie across the miles of fragrant blossoms. 
The hunters are in despair, and the deer, still 
deafened by the yelp of the winter's hounds, 
beholds himself at last befriended by an ally more 
invincible than water, or forest oak, by the sweet 
and innumerable white lilies that every Maytime 
send the hunters home. Feeding among the per- 
fumed flowers the deer exults in delight and safety. 
The same thing is true of the trusting and faith- 
ful soul who enters into the blessing of God, 
rejoicing in it, delighting in the fragrance of divine 
love. Such a man or woman not only feeds in 
the green pastures, and lies down 'to rest there, 
but the hounds of evil lose their scent and are 
turned back disappointed, because of the very 
sweetness and joy in the midst of which they 
abide. 

And this keeping power of God does not end 
with this life. How strongly Paul says that he 
is not afraid to trust Him into whose hands he T ias 
put his all, for he is persuaded that he will keep 
that which he has committed to him against the 
great day of final reward. It is not only ourselves, 
and our dear ones who still live with us here, that 
we may commit into the keeping hands of God, 
but we know that he will keep those who have gone 
out from us, after whom our hearts go in such 
tender pursuit. { Dr. Fairbairn has a beautiful 



316 THE GEE AT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

suggestion, taken from the story of Columbus : 
How once there gathered on the shore of Spain a 
group of men and women. They watched three 
small boats stand out to sea. They saw them van- 
ish into the great, vast, mysterious, and unex- 
plored Western ocean. Whether they passed into 
the heaven above, whether they floated on the sea 
below, who could tell? And many a time amid 
Western isles Columbus and his men thought, "Do 
they miss us at home? Do they think of us as 
still living amid these Western isles ?" When 
they returned, as men from death, what did they 
return to ? To love, to home, to all that meant 
for them fame and immortality. So often on 
earth we think of our loved dead, now floating on 
earth, now passed into heaven. Wherever they 
are, let us lift up our hands and say: "Thou art 
still in the keeping of Him who says the first is 
the last. The will of God still remaineth, the 
will that blesses and keeps. Thou art in his 
eternal keeping. Has he not said, 'I have the 
keys of death' ?" J 

III 

The third link is a promise of illumination: 
"The Lord make his face shine upon thee." 
We all do our best in the light of the face of the 
one we love. Children will work wonders often- 
times in the light of father's or mother's face. 
Whittier has a beautiful little poem which illus- 



A CHAIN OF BLESSING 



317 



trates this link in our chain of blessing. He 
sings : 

A tender child of summers three, 

Seeking her little bed at night, 
Paused on the dark stair timidly, 
"O mother, take my hand!" said she, 

"And then the dark will all be light." 

We older children grope our way 

Prom dark behind to dark before; 
And only when our hands we lay, 
Dear Lord, in thine, the night is day, 
And there is darkness nevermore! 

Reach downward to the sunless days 
Wherein our guides are blind as we, 

And faith is small and hope delays; 

Take thou the hands of prayer we raise, 
And let us feel the light of thee. 

None of us will ever come to our best, either 
in character or achievement, except as we walk 
in the light of his face who is our Lord and our 
Master, for in the sunlight of his face every 
capability we have receives divine impetus, and 
service becomes our highest joy and our greatest 
glory. 

IV 

Our fourth link is a thought of "grace." If we 
are saved, it will be by the free grace of God. 
God gives Moses this link of blessing for the 
people, "And be gracious unto thee." We cannot 
buy the grace and favor of God. The greatest 
things in life are always beyond purchase. No 



318 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



man makes so great a blunder as the man who 
thinks money can buy everything. The great 
things, such as love, and hope, and faith, and 
courage, and peace of conscience, and content- 
ment, are all out of the market where money is 
of any value. The greatest things can come to us 
only by the free grace of God. 
\ When Clara Barton was engaged in the Eed 
Cross work in Cuba, during the Spanish American 
War, President Eoosevelt, then Colonel Roosevelt, 
came to her desiring to buy some delicacies for 
the sick and wounded men under his command. 
His request was refused. Eoosevelt was troubled ; 
he loved his men, and was ready to pay for the 
supplies out of his own pocket. 

"How can I get these things ?" he said ; "I must 
have proper food for my sick men." 

"Just ask for them, Colonel," said the surgeon 
in charge of the Eed Cross headquarters. 

"0," said Eoosevelt, his face breaking into a 
smile, "then I do ask for them." 

And he got them at once; but you notice that 
he got them through grace and not through pur- 
chase. If men could buy the grace of a quiet 
conscience and a restful heart, how the million- 
aires would vie with each other at such an auc- 
tion; but no one can have this chain of heaven's 
gold except by the free grace of God, which is j 
offered to us every one. 



A CHAIN OF BLESSING 



319 



So beautiful and generous is God's grace that 
it can clothe upon that which has been ugly and 
unlovable in us, and give it divine charm, so that 
it will be beautiful and helpful to others. Some 
poet sings this truth with striking beauty : 

A lonely rock by the wayside, 

All jagged and seamed and rent, 
Yet over its brow the daisies 

Their pure, bright faces bent; 
Gay columbines danced on slender stems, 

And fairy trumpets blew; 
Prom every crevice tufts of fern 

And feathery grasses grew, 
Till gone were the outlines sharp and bare 

That might offend the eye, 
And the wayside rock was a charming sight 

To every passer-by. 

Dear heart, alone and lonely, 

Though shattered life's hopes may be, 
The Lord who cares for the wayside rock 

Much more will care for thee. 
Thy deeds of tenderness, words of love, 

Like flowers may spring and twine, 
Till joy shall come into others' lives 

Prom the very rents in thine. 

V 

( Our fifth link is the consciousness of God's 
presence. "The Lord lift up his countenance 
upon thee." We are ennobled and exalted when 
we feel that God so cares for us and thinks about 
us and considers us that he is taking a hand in 



320 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

our lives, and is personally with loving thought 
revealing his heart to us and doing us honor. I 
have read somewhere a story of the Crimean War, 
that when the soldiers returned to England, those 
who had specially distinguished themselves by 
heroic service were marshaled in a line to receive 
from Queen Victoria the crosses or medals which 
rewarded their valorous merit. As she passed 
along the line she took the decorations one by one 
from a salver carried by her side and pinned them 
to the breast of the happy recipients. As she was 
pinning one on it slipped from her hand and fell 
to the ground. A servant, who was near, picked 
it up and was proceeding to pin it to the soldier's 
breast, when the veteran drew back and said: 
"N"o ; I do not value that piece of metal. It is the 
hand which bestows it that I value." But his face 
lit up with joy and his eyes filled with tears of 
gladness and pride when the Queen graciously 
turned back and pinned it on his breast with her 
own hands. So the supreme honor and the 
supreme glory of our life is that through Jesus 
Christ our Saviour we may come into personal 
fellowship with God, and may realize that his 
countenance bends over us with infinite tender- 
ness. You may ask me a hundred questions that 
I cannot answer about how God makes himself 
known to my heart, but none of these questions 
or their lack of answer can for a moment blind 



A CHAIiST OF BLESSING 



321 



me to the conscious presence of God, who has 
come to me in joy and in sorrow with the light 
of his countenance lifted upon me. The poet sings 
out of Christian experience when he asks : 

How does God send the Comforter? 

Ofttimes through byways dim; 
Not always by the beaten path 

Of sacrament and hymn; 
Not always through the gates of prayer, 

Or penitential psalm, 
Or sacred rite, or holy day, 

Or incense, breathing balm. 

How does God send the Comforter? 

Perchance through faith intense; 
Perchance through humblest avenues 

Of sight, or sound, or sense. 
Haply in childhood's laughing voice 

Shall breathe the voice divine, 
And tender hands of earthly love 

Pour for thee heavenly wine! 

How will God send the Comforter? 

Thou knowest not, nor I! 
His ways are countless as the stars 

His hand hath hung on high. 
His roses bring their fragrant balm, 

His twilight hush its peace, 
Morning its splendor, night its calm, 

To give thy pain surcease! y 

VI 

Our sixth and last link in the chain is "peace." 
"And give thee peace." All the chain of God's 
blessing leads to peace. However it may begin, it 



822 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

is at last to issue into peace. Isaiah puts it right 
when he says that we may go out with joy, tumul- 
tuous gladness, with the mountains and the hills 
breaking forth into singing, and all the trees of the 
fields clapping their hands, as they sometimes 
seem to do to ambitious youth; but finally, as 
the climax of all, we shall be "led forth with 
peace." None of us know through what we must 
pass in the mysterious future which lies before 
us ; but if our minds are stayed upon God, we have 
the assurance, the guarantee, that in whatever 
shall come to us we may have peace. 

A few years ago, when those terrible earth- 
quakes swept over South America, desolating so 
fearfully so many regions, destroying such vast 
amounts of property, and multitudes of human 
lives, a gentleman in England received from a 
friend in South America a most interesting let- 
ter relating his own experience. The night of 
the earthquake this man happened to be in its 
path, and was awakened in the night by the shock. 
He had been a very rich man, but in a few 
moments all his property was destroyed, his own 
life was in danger, and he was crushed and 
bruised. He said that in the midnight darkness 
there came to him a new experience of God. He 
readjusted himself, as it were, to the mystery of 
existence, and new faith was born. This man 
felt as though illusion had been stripped from him, 



A CHAIN OF BLESSING 323 

as though the earthquake shock were telling him 
that there is nothing in the outward appearance 
of things to which the soul ought to cling, there 
is nothing real and abiding but God. There came 
home to that man, in the loneliness of night, in 
the midst of the terror of the earthquake, an assur- 
ance of the love of God as the one abiding reality 
in the universe. The poet is right, 

This world is all a fleeting show, 

For man's illusion given; 
The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, 
Deceitful shine, deceitful flow — 

There's nothing true but heaven! 



CHAPTEE XXV 

The True Test for the Christian's Conduct 

When the Philistines took the ark of God, they 
brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. 
And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, 
behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth 
before the ark of the Lord. — 1 Sam. 5. 2, 3. 

Israel, was at war with the Philistines, those 
bold and reckless people which hung along their 
borders and troubled them generation after gene- 
ration. One day, as the battle was on, a messen- 
ger came flying from the field of strife. All who 
saw him could tell that something terrible had 
happened, for as he ran he rent his clothes and 
put earth upon his head. At last he came to where 
Eli sat by the wayside watching. Eli was God's 
prophet, nearly a hundred years of age, and as 
the messenger drew near he inquired of him, and 
when he was told that the ark of God had been 
taken by the Philistines the venerable prophet 
fell to the earth and died. 

These Philistines were idolaters, and in the 
town of Ashdod they had a temple built in honor 
of Dagon, their famous fish-god. The lower part 
of the body of Dagon was shaped like a fish and 
the upper part was in the form of a man. Dagon 
was kept on a shelf in the temple, and the people 

324 



TRUE TEST FOR CHRISTIANAS CONDUCT 325 

came in the morning to offer their worship to 
him, and so when they got possession of the ark 
of the Lord, which contained the tables of the 
law, they took it and placed it in the temple by 
the side of Dagon. They thought this was the 
God of Israel, and so they placed it alongside 
of their god, and no doubt thought they would get 
the blessing of both gods in this way. But in the 
morning, when they came to offer their morning 
salutations, to their astonishment Dagon was flat 
on his face before the ark of the Lord, as though 
he were worshiping. They hastened to place him 
again in an upright position and waited with 
anxious hearts until the next morning. I sus- 
pect that many of them had a sleepless night, for 
the record says they arose very early the next 
morning and went to the temple, and they were 
shocked to see that Dagon was not only again fallen 
on his face to the ground before the ark of tne 
Lord, but the head of Dagon and both the palms 
of his hands were broken off, and only the old 
fish stump of Dagon was left, and they fled in 
despair from the temple of their god. 

Now the ark of the Lord was a type of Jesus 
Christ, and I think that we have in this old story 
an illustration of a great theme which is full of 
teaching for us to-day. Everything must finally 
stand the test of being brought into the presence 
of Jesus Christ, and everything that is out of 



826 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

harmony with him, that does not deserve to live 
in the light of his countenance, will be cast down 
and destroyed. 

I 

All wrong will finally go down before Christ. 
~No matter how powerful or entrenched any insti- 
tution is, if it cannot stand unblushing in the 
presence of Jesus, it will finally be broken in 
pieces. One by one we see the Dagons of wrong 
go down. When Christianity first entered Rome, 
the Coliseum was the theater in which men were 
pitted against each other and against wild beasts, 
and hundreds and thousands of them slain. But 
the gladiatorial combats went down before Jesus 
Christ. Human slavery stalked abroad in the 
world, filling the earth with moans and cries of 
misery for ages, and the results of it we are still 
grappling with and suffering from in our own 
land, but slavery could not stand in the presence 
of Christ, and as the light of his face more and 
more illuminated the world it fell down like Dagon 
before the ark of the Lord and was broken in 
pieces. And we might well learn a lesson from 
this in confronting the present serious problems 
in the treatment of both the white and the black 
working man in our own land. Man cannot treat 
his weaker brother with injustice and stand in 
the presence of Jesus Christ. The superior man 
must show his superiority and his greatness, not 



TRUE TEST FOR CHRISTIAN'S CONDUCT 327 



by cruelty and injustice and oppression, but by 
helpful service and Christlike brotherhood. In 
the treatment of our fellow men, black and white, 
everything that cannot stand up in the presence 
of Jesus Christ and win his smile of approbation 
must finally go to pieces. 

r The doom of the liquor traffic can be read in 
the face of Jesus Christ. The liquor saloon, like 
Dagon, will fall to the ground and be broken in 
pieces finally, because it is destroying immortal 
souls for whom Christ died. Political expediency 
can never stand up in the white light of the face 
of Jesus Christ to successfully defend or main- 
tain an evil thing, > 

II 

Our personal lives in all their details of conduct 
must stand the test of being brought into the pres- 
ence of Jesus. It is a good thing for a business 
man to ask himself frequently whether his busi- 
ness life will stand that test. Some people seem 
to think that they are made in compartments, 
with a business compartment, a political com- 
partment, and a religious compartment, all sepa- 
rate, and as a steamship made that way may have 
one compartment stove in and full of water, and 
the other compartments know nothing about it, so 
these people seem to think that their business 
life and their religious life are so distinct and 



328 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

separate that one has no influence over the other. 
There could not be a sadder error. Your busi- 
ness life must be able to stand the light of the face 
of Jesus Christ, or your whole character will go 
down in ruin. You cannot be wrong in business 
and right in religion. The same thing is true of 
political life. A man cannot lie and deceive in 
politics and stand unabashed before Christ. There 
is no difference between political deceit and deceit 
of any other kind. Our political opportunities 
and privileges, as well as our business resources, 
are a sacred trusteeship which we hold for the good 
of the community, and we must bring them into 
the presence of Christ if we would be able to 
judge them truly. 

Our personal ambitions and purposes for our- 
selves must stand the test of Christ's presence. 
The most insidious temptation to good people 
is to be vain and proud of their own goodness. 
The Pharisee who thanked God that he was not 
as other men, even as the poor publican, has 
multitudes of followers in our own time. Beware 
of that temptation! Some one well says that 
"Jesus Christ put humility as the foundation of 
all the virtues, because, unless it is there, you 
will not keep any of the virtues." A man may 
be an open-handed, generous man, but as soon as 
he becomes vain of it even his generosity ceases to 
be a virtue and becomes selfish. We need to bring 



TRUE TEST FOR CHRISTIANAS CONDUCT 329 

our most hidden and secret motives and purposes 
continually to the test of the light of Christ's 
countenance that we may be sure that they may 
stand in his sight. 

We need to bring our benevolence and our 
sympathy toward others to Christ frequently, to 
make sure that they are really Christian. The 
reason why so much that passes for benevolence 
and Christian sympathy falls helpless to the 
ground is that it is not really Christian. Take 
Paul's command to the Komans, "Weep with them 
that weep." Job says : "Did not I weep for him 
that was in trouble ? Was not my soul grieved 
for the needy ?" Paul's utterance means a great 
deal more than that. Paul does not ask us to 
weep for people who are weeping, but to weep with 
them. I doubt if many of us care to be wept for, 
but if we are in real trouble and somebody weeps 
with us we never forget it. Mrs. Carlyle men- 
tions in one of her letters that when she had been 
laid up alone with her trusted maid, the girl 
came into the room and would constantly bend 
down over her and rub her cheek against her mis- 
tress, and then Mrs. Carlyle goes on and says, "And 
once when she did it her cheek was wet with tears." 
And then she says to her husband, "And you 
would not think that those tears would have cured 
the headache, but they did." That was true Chris- 
tian sympathy. When Jesus Christ went to the 



330 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

home of Martha and Mary in Bethany, at the time 
of the death of their brother, he did not weep for 
them, but he wept with them, and we must bring 
our sympathy and our benevolent conduct, our 
attitude toward our neighbors, into the presence 
of Jesus before we can really test it and make 
sure that it is Christian. 

Our pleasures must stand this test of being 
brought into the presence of Christ. If they fall 
there, we know they are not Christian and are 
unworthy of us. God intends that we shall be 
happy. The keynote of the universe is joy and 
not sorrow. God has so created us and fitted us 
into the world that we receive pleasure through 
every window of the soul. The normal healthy 
man or woman gets pleasure from all depart- 
ments of wholesome living. It is a happiness to 
eat when we are hungry, to drink when we are 
thirsty, to sleep when we are tired, and through 
the eyes and ears, and the nerves of sensation, 
we are played upon by ten thousand influences 
that give us visions of beauty and sounds and 
harmonies that fill the soul with delight. So 
let us never doubt that God means our happiness. 
But we must seek our happiness along lines and 
in methods that are in harmony with the truest 
and noblest character. And when we are in 
doubt as to the character of any source of pleasure, 
there is one sure and infallible test, and that is 



TRUE TEST FOR CHRISTIANS CONDUCT 331 

to bring it into the presence of Jesus Christ. If 
it appears pure and innocent and wholesome m 
that white light, then we may rejoice in it; but 
if, when we bring it into the presence of Jesus, 
it falls blushing and ashamed to the ground, as 
Dagon before the ark of the Lord, we must cast 
it from us, for we know that it is unwholesome 
and evil. 

We must bring our purpose and our effort to 
bless others and hold them up before Christ if we 
would make sure they are Christian. What a 
waste of effort there is in the most holy and sacred 
directions ! How often we see men trying to win 
others to Christ in a harsh spirit utterly foreign 
to the Lord. If we would learn the art of restor- 
ing souls, we must test our efforts in the presence 
of Christ. Dr. Watkinson beautifully says that 
the only man who can restore a great picture is 
the man who painted it, and that the only one who 
can restore human nature is the one who knows 
the secret — only He who in the first instance 
breathed into us the breath of life, and made us 
living souls. Jesus Christ is the Great Restorer ! 
If we seek to bless men, we must come to them in 
his spirit of meekness and of gentleness. A silk 
manufacturer told Dr. Watkinson that in his 
manufacturing place they had to take away the 
steel rods because the silk cut through them! 
One would have fancied it would be impossible 



332 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

for soft silk to cut through steel rods, but it was 
so. Ah, there is nothing in this world like gentle- 
ness ! That is the gift by which you cut through 
the sinew of the most obdurate. ( Only by gentle- 
ness and love will you win men to a purer and 
nobler life. And if we would win men to Christ, 
we must so live in his presence that we constantly 
test our spirit by his. 

Ill 

If we are to make Christ real to the people who 
are associated with us, we must live in such per- 
fect harmony with Jesus that he is incarnated in 
us and unconsciously revealed in our daily liv- 
ing; and this can never be so unless we are much 
alone with Christ. } I was reading an address 
recently in which the writer said that "The secret 
of religion is religion in secret." There is a story 
that many years ago an artist wanted to copy one 
of the masterpieces in the Vatican. At that time 
an easel was not 'admitted to the gallery. At 
first he was in despair, then a thought struck 
him. Hastening out, he secured rooms, placed 
his easel and brushes in position, returned to the 
gallery, planted himself opposite the great pic- 
ture, gazed upon it, drank in outline, form, first 
in one and then in another part of the canvas, 
then hastening out, transferred the outline and, 
by and by, the tints, to his own canvas, and by 
slow degrees completed the picture. So we must 



TRUE TEST FOR CHRISTIANAS CONDUCT 333 

give the unseen Artist time, or lie never can paint 
the likeness of Jesus Christ upon our souls. If 
we talk with God in our closets, and hold com- 
munion with our Saviour there, in the open market 
place and in our social life those who meet us will 
see something of Christ. 

Dr. A. J. Gordon, a famous Boston preacher, 
who was one of the noblest saints of God, once 
gave a very beautiful illustration of how the Chris- 
tian comes to represent Jesus Christ. He said 
he had seen in New England two little saplings 
grow up side by side. Through the action of 
the winds they crossed each other. By and by 
the bark of each became wounded, and the sap 
began to mingle, until — on some still day — they 
became united together. This process went on, 
and by and by they were firmly compacted. Then 
the stronger began to absorb the life of the weaker. 
One grew larger and larger, while the other grew 
smaller and smaller, withering 'and declining, till 
it fairly dropped away and disappeared. And 
now there are two trunks at the bottom, and only 
one at the top. Death has taken away the one, 
life has triumphed in the other. So there was a 
time when you and J esus Christ met ; the wounds 
of your penitent heart began to knit up with the 
wounds of his broken heart, and you were united 
to Christ. Where are you now? Are the two 
lives only running parallel? Or has the Word 



334 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

been accomplished in you, "He must increase, 
but I must decrease" ? Has the old life in you 
been growing less and less, grace more and more 
modifying it, until it seems almost to have dis- 
appeared? Blessed are you if such is the case. 
Then you can say, "I have been crucified with 
Christ, and no longer live, but Christ liveth in 
me." 

( If we are to win men and conquer them for 
God, we must not only reveal Christ in our words 
but in our very selves. Sylvester Horne, the 
English preacher, tells how he was speaking one 
Saturday afternoon in London in the street, where 
his words could be heard in a good many public 
houses. And at the close of his address a man 
came straight out from one of these drinking places 
into the middle of the crowd and began to argue 
with him. He started off in his own way : "Why," 
he said, "there is the Archbishop of Canterbury 
with fifteen thousand pounds a year !" 

"And what about the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury?" Mr. Horne asked. 

But he went on, "And there is the Pope of 
Rome, not satisfied with less than a hundred 
thousand a year." 

"Never mind them," the preacher said. "What 
this Book says is not, 'What think ye of the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, or of the Pope either, but 
what do you think of Christ V " 



TRUE TEST FOR CHRISTIANS CONDUCT 335 



And Mr. Home said lie never saw a greater 
change come over any man. He took off his hat 
with an extraordinary gesture of respect, and 
before all the people, he said : "O, if that is what 
you are at, I take off my hat to that Gentleman, 

sir." ; 

We must show men Jesus in our living if we 
would charm them to God. Dr. Egerton Young, 
the Indian missionary, once undertook to preach 
and read the Bible to five wild Indians up in the 
far North, but they shook their heads and said: 
"]STo, Missionary, we are very much obliged to you 
for stopping and sharing with us your last meal, 
but we are not going to be Christians. We don't 
like the religion of the white man, because we 
don't like the white man. He has brought whisky 
among us, and measles, and smallpox; he has 
robbed and cheated us ; and so we don't want the 
white man's religion." 

Mr. Young and his two companions, as well as 
these five Indians, were suffering greatly for lack 
of food, and the next day all that they were able 
to get was one large fish. The fish was scaled 
and cleaned and they boiled it. When it was 
ready, the man who caught it cut off about one 
third and handed it to Mr. Young. But he looked 
around at the others and said: "ISTo, that is not 
right." He put the piece back with the other two 
thirds and began to count — one, two, three, four, 



336 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

five, six, seven, eight. Then he went to work and 
carved that fish into eight pieces, handed each man 
an equal share, and took only his own portion. 

One day in the following summer five great, 
stalwart Indians came tramping into Young's 
Mission House. They rushed at him, and rubbed 
him, and mauled him with their great big hands, 
that were fragrant with muskrats and other things 
more pungent still. The missionary asked, "What 
in the world makes you so happy ?" 

They replied, "Don't you remember the fish ?" 
And they went on to speak of the time when he 
divided that fish into eight parts. 

Mr. Young said : "0, you are those fellows, are 
youT 

They replied : "We never forgot that sermon, of 
the fish. We offered you one third, and you 
would not take it ; you divided it among the eight, 
and you took your little bit, and gave us an equal 
share. When you were gone we came back and 
rolled logs on the fire, and we sat there all night 
and talked it over ; and we said : 'We must listen 
to that man. He has talked to us about the Great 
Spirit and his Son Jesus. We must take him as 
our Saviour.' " 

They had been driven from Christ by wicked 
white men, but they were won back to him when 
they saw Christ in a white man. My friends, 
there is great need that each of us who profess 



TRUE TEST FOR CHRISTIAN'S CONDUCT 337 

the name of Jesus should be able to reveal him 
constantly to those about us. Then the song of the 
poet shall become a reality in us: 

Turn to the world a shining face, 

There are sad hearts everywhere; 
The smile that you give may help some one to live; 

May help somebody's burdens to bear. 

Write your blessings in lines of gold; 

Your woes in invisible ink; 
When your life is seen in the heavenly sheen, 

All things will be clear, I think. 

Give to the world the best you have, 

And the best will come back to you; 
'Midst life's weary throng lift your voice in a song, 

And its echoes will cleave the blue. 

Lend your weak brother a helping hand, 

Though he stumble again and slide; 
Let your patience be long, as becometh the strong, 

And deep as the ocean tide. 

Turn to the world a courage brave, 

There is some one you may inspire; 
When your own heart fails, and your courage quails, 

You can turn for your strength still higher. 

Give to your God a love sincere, 

And a conscience clear and white; 
Though the darkness fall black as midnight pall, 

You will walk with him in light. 



CHAPTEK XXVI 

The Working Principle of True Religion 

. . . But have not love, it profiteth me nothing. — 
1 Cor. IS. 3. 

Love is the sacred oil which gives smoothness 
of action and efficiency in results to all the machin- 
ery of life. This thirteenth chapter of Paul's 
first letter to the Corinthians is the most superb 
eulogy of love that was ever written. I never 
read it but I, somehow, compare it with Abra- 
ham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address — the one 
a eulogy of patriotism, the other a eulogy of love. 
Paul paints the picture of a splendid character, 
endowed with all the great gifts and talents for 
which men are ambitious. Read over these opening 
sentences and you will see that he holds before the 
gaze a man whose gifts and graces would combine 
in one person the eloquence of an Apollos, the 
logic of a Bacon, the vision and poetic insight of 
a Shakespeare, the faith of a Luther, and the self- 
sacrifice of a Saint Prancis — surely that would be 
a wonderful personality, and yet Paul says that 
though he himself were a man like that, gathering 
into his own brain and heart and life the gifts and 
talents and graces of all these men, it would profit 
him nothing if love were not the dominant note. 

838 



WORKING PRINCIPLE OF TRUE RELIGION 339 

This wonderful eulogy of Paul's suggests to us 
the enormous waste of energy in the world, caused 
by the lack of love as a working principle, I read 
not long ago a very interesting economic discus- 
sion which showed how the application of scientific 
principles and methods to the processes of manu- 
facture were doing away with the waste which 
only a little while ago was so tremendous in our 
economic life. The author points out that the 
straw and stubble of flax, wheat, corn, and cotton, 
once useless, an incumbrance to be burned, has now 
become valuable raw material. 

Within the memory of men now living, coal 
had but one use, and petroleum, having no value 
as a light-giver, was known under many names, 
as so many different kinds of oil, and was admin- 
istered as a peculiarly nauseous medicine. The 
discovery that it might be refined and burned 
caused a revolution in many of the arts of living, 
but the refining of the oil was accompanied by 
an enormous waste of a peculiarly indestructible 
character. On land it was in y the way, and in the 
water it poisoned the fishes. Some chemist dis- 
covered in it coal tar, and in the refuse of the oil 
refineries valuable elements which might be ex- 
tracted, purified, and made useful in the mechani- 
cal arts. Then came a bewildering assortment 
of dyes, essences, and extracts, in which were to 
be found all the colors and odors of the floral 



340 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE Bx->LE 

world, with their subtle and volatile products, 
and which quickly entered into the stock in trade 
of the druggist and the practice of the physician. 
So this saving of the waste products of manu- 
facture has vastly increased the wealth of the 
world. And this is only a suggestion of the many 
ways in which the application of science to com- 
mon life has turned wastage into sources of wealth. 
Now, this ought to be an illustration to us of the 
terrific wastage in the mental and spiritual world 
which the application of love would turn into 
sources of mental and spiritual income. The dif- 
ference between a life that is rich and one that is 
poverty-stricken is often simply the difference 
between that of one who utilizes all his resources 
and of one who allows everything to run to waste 
except what he considers applicable to the busi- 
ness by which he earns his daily bread. 

Our theme this morning should teach us to 
remember that it is only in the atmosphere of 
love that any man or any woman can utilize all 
the resources of a human life and save from 
eternal wastage the greatest and holiest forces 
that belong to our heritage. 

I 

Let us notice some of the great things, things 
which the world calls great, that are failures with- 
out love. Paul assures us, for instance, that it 



WORKING PRINCIPLE OF TRUE RELIGION 341 

is only love that can give any real power to elo- 
quence. It may be that when Paul wrote this he 
remembered the divine persuasiveness of speech 
that belonged to Ananias, the good man of Damas- 
cus, who came to him when he was in need, when 
he was stunned by the revelation made to him in 
his noonday vision. Ananias knew all about Saul 
— that is, he knew about his bigotry, his prejudice 
against Christ, his cruel and brutal hatred against 
Christians — and he had talked with God in prayer 
about it before he came to where Saul was; but 
when he came, and laid his hands upon his shoul- 
der, his first words were, "Brother Saul." What 
an eloquence of love there must have been in those 
words to the poor broken-hearted man. Great 
grace was upon the soul that could address as 
"Brother" the man who had come to the city on 
a murderous errand, and had been suddenly 
arrested. It is this that has forever lifted Ana- 
nias out of the category of commonplace men. A 
man may have no reputation for brilliance, but 
if from association with God he has been so 
endowed with love that he is able to think and to 
practice a divinely inspired brotherliness, he be- 
longs to the order of the great. 

Multitudes of men in the pulpit, and in the 
pews, and in the Sunday school classes, who are 
gifted with glib and fluent speech, are barren of 
power and barren of results such as they desire, 



342 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

because the live coal of love from off God's altar 
has not yet touched their lips. I had a friend, a 
man of noble powers, who, nevertheless, despite 
the admiration and respect which he always com- 
manded, won no one to Christ, and grieved over 
it. But there came a day when God in his great 
mercy brought such pressure to bear upon that 
man that he was shaken out of his self-compla- 
cency and brought into a divinely human tender- 
ness toward his fellows, and always afterward, 
though his eloquence was the same as of yore, 
there was in it a new note of love and sympathy 
that, somehow, drew men to God. It is not enough 
to be able with clearness and with graphic diction 
to bear witness to the faith that is in us. Love 
like a tincture divine must inspire and make 
magnetic our words if they are to fulfill our Lord's 
purpose in us. 

II 

We may learn also from our theme that learn- 
ing, and scholarship, and great gifts of intelli- 
gence will fail of their greatest purpose unless 
love set learning on fire with a passion for help- 
fulness. Paul says, "And if I have the gift of 
prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowl- 
edge ; . . . but have not love, I am nothing/' 

Dr. Gunsaulus, in a great sermon on "Workers 
Together with God/' says that from the moment 
there came the inception of the Infinite, a man 



WORKING PRINCIPLE OF TRUE RELIGION 343 

was no longer a being on all fours. He stood 
upright, yet he was never more fixed or real- 
istically related to the planet in which he works 
out the problem of his life. 

So soon as man's personality flashed out into 
the Infinite, and he found his own personality 
related to a personal God, so soon there came into 
his life such an enterprise and partnership that 
he became warm with love and could realize his 
destiny. Jenny Lind said she "sang to God."' 
It is only love that can bring such loftiness into 
our lives that everything is said and done and 
hoped in God and the great God himself becomes 
a partner in our lives. Murillo painted a picture 
for the cathedral of his native city, with all the 
brilliancy and color and all the enthusiasm of his 
religious life. When he took it to the cathedral 
the monks said, "It is giddy; it is not refined." 

"Ah," said Murillo, "put it in the cupola; it 
belongs to the dome." 

They did so, and the distance softened the lines. 
The monks gazed with admiration at the picture 
when it was in its right place. So never until you 
are singing to God, like Jenny Lind, never until 
you are painting for the dome, for the highest 
that is in you, out of love for God, like 
Murillo, will your intelligence or your best gifts 
come to their dominion. 

What multitudes of great men have failed for 



344 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

lack of love! There have been few greater men, 
in many ways, than Cardinal Wolsey. In history 
Wolsey stands out as a man of tremendous talents ; 
but if you want to know why he failed, if you 
want to see the flaw that caused his fall, take up 
your Shakespeare in the great scene of Henry 
VIII, and you will perceive the root out of which 
grew the evils of his life- — evils which had over- 
thrown so much in him naturally great. It is 
profoundly significant that such a man as Shake- 
speare should put into the mouth of such a man 
as Wolsey: 

Fling away ambition: 
By that sin fell the angels; how can man then, 
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it? 
Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee. 

Then again those words of despair: 

Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
I served my king, he would not in mine age 
Have left me naked to mine enemies. 

Shakespeare makes it clear that the secret of 
failure in this great man's life, in his judgment, 
was lack of love. He had great knowledge, he had 
keenness of perception, he was a master of mys- 
teries ; but, lacking love, his life was a failure. 

Ill 

We are also assured that we may have clear 
and vital faith, a faith that is acute and correct, 
and yet fail to bring the soul into fellowship with 



WORKING PRINCIPLE OF TRUE RELIGION 345 

God, which is the true end of all faith, through 
the lack of love. How strongly Paul puts it — 
"And if I have all faith, so as to remove moun- 
tains, but have not love, I am nothing" ! A man 
may have so much faith that it puts tremendous 
energy and force into his life, causing him to over- 
come many obstacles, to surmount many difficulties ; 
but if he lacks love, it will fail to bring the soul 
into that warm fellowship with God which is the 
true end of all faith. Love is greater than faith, 
because faith fails in its purpose without love. 
History is full of examples of men who have had 
faith enough to do great deeds, to lead armies, to 
conquer states, to accomplish wonderful results, 
and yet, lacking love, lacked that sweet and 
precious fellowship with God which Christ reveals 
to us in every action of his life. It is very heart- 
ening to take up the Gospels and note how the 
life of Jesus was knit to the life of God through 
all the experiences of his earthly life because of 
his loving faith. Dr. James Denney says that 
Jesus rejoiced in what seemed disappointment 
because he knew that the unchanging love of God 
was in it, and it was the good will of the Father 
that ordained it to be. And when our faith is 
bathed in love we too know that it is not chance 
that underlies our life; it is not fate, which, to 
a spiritual being, has exactly the same meaning; 
for what underlies everything is the love in which 



346 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

the Father and the Son are related to each other, 
the love in which Jesus lived and moved and had 
his being on earth. When we look at the pain and 
shame and sorrow and sin of life, it is not possible 
for us to believe that the deepest reality in the 
world is the love of God for his children, unless 
we look on the cross of Jesus Christ, and see Christ 
making the sin and the pain and the shame and 
the sorrow of the world his own, and yet living in 
the love and joy of God through it all. When we 
really catch that sight, love glorifies faith. See- 
ing his love for us, we love him. "Happy are 
those who see Jesus Christ, and see in him the 
reality of life, and that that reality is the unchang- 
ing love of God. Happy are those who see this, 
and when they see it, have the world changed for 
them into a new place, into a happier place, and 
a safer place; into a mansion of their Father's 
house, where they can live the life that Jesus 
lived, and share his joy and confidence in the love 
of God." 

IV 

Benevolence and enthusiasm for good causes, 
indeed, the most astonishing sacrifices for the poor 
or for righteousness, are of no avail without love. 
Paul says: "If I bestow all my goods to feed the 
poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but 
have not love, it profiteth me nothing." As some 
man says, "It may be easier to die for Christ than 



WORKING PRINCIPLE OF TRUE RELIGION 347 

to live for love ; to suffer brief agony than to suf- 
fer long.' 7 Self-sacrifice may be only a tragedy; 
indeed, it often is the most terrible kind of a 
tragedy, without love. And among the men who 
serve, it is the men who are dominated by love 
who are able to do the greatest service and who 
are treasured up in the heart of the world forever 
afterward. It is purposed in this one hundredth 
anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln to 
build a great national arch in Washington as a 
token of the nation's love of a great public servant. 
And as we look back over the life of Lincoln we 
all have to admit that the supreme note in Lin- 
coln's life was love. When Abraham Lincoln came 
to be President no man had said coarser, harder, 
crueller things about him than Mr. Stanton ; but 
Lincoln made him secretary of war. Why? 
Because he believed him to be the most suitable 
man for the post. Mr. Chase said the most abu- 
sive things about Lincoln, but the President made 
him chief justice of the United States, because 
he believed him to be the best man to fill the » 
position. One day he said to his friend, Joshua 
Speed, "Speed, die when I may, I wish those who 
know me best to be able to say that I have always 
plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I 
thought the flower would grow." When he began 
the work of building up the States that had been 
so rent and torn he took for his guiding thought 



348 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

the idea which he expressed in those wonderful 
words, "With malice toward none, with charity 
for all, let us bind up the nation's wounds." 
Dear friends, that is the kind of a life of service 
that helps the world in its progress toward God. 
That is the kind of life of which Leigh Hunt 
wrote : 

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) 
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, 
And saw within the moonlight of his room, 
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, 
An angel writing in a book of gold. 
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, 
And to the presence in the room he said, 
"What writest thou?" The vision raised its head, 
And with a look, made all of sweet accord, 
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." 
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so," 
Replied the angel. Abou spake more low, 
But cheerily still, and said, "I pray thee, then, 
Write me as one that loves his fellow men." 
The angel wrote and vanished. The next night 
It came again with a great wakening light, 
And showed the names whom love of God has blest — 
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. 

V 

What the Christian Church needs above every- 
thing else to stimulate its onward march and 
make its triumph certain is a fresh baptism of 
love. In the book of Revelation Christ tells Saint 
J ohn that though the church at Ephesus had had 
patience, and had labored, and borne burdens, 



WORKING PRINCIPLE OF TRUE RELIGION 349 

and had been true to the faith, yet, nevertheless, 
its candlestick was in danger of being removed 
because its members had left their first love. The 
glow of tenderness had been lost. The fervor of 
their love for Christ had burned low. May we 
not be in the same danger % We must not forget 
that the supreme power of the church is love, 
and loss of that will weaken us and make us 
ineffective. 

Many of you have read the stories of the great- 
ness of the court of King Arthur. They tell us 
that when Arthur came to his own people, accom- 
panied by his loyal knights, he bade them go forth 
with him, and in the fair love and loyalty that 
they bore him they all went with their king, and 
the hosts of Arthur rode out ; and they drove back, 
as some great wave, all the forces of heathenism. 
Gradually, in the realm, there came a purer, a 
freer condition. These hordes were driven back, 
and everywhere the will of Arthur was the will 
of men, and the sway of Arthur was the sway 
men loved to know. And then there came a day 
when from one far corner of the realm a messen- 
ger brought the news that the hosts of Arthur 
had been defeated. Another messenger came from 
another quarter: "The knights of Arthur have 
been forced back, and those powers that greatly 
waste are come into the kingdom of the great 
king." Then Arthur went forth at the head of his 



350 THE GKEAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

troops, and he had in his hand that magic sword 
that had known no defeat. And Arthur fought^ 
and his knights fought with him. But the king 
was driven back, mortally wounded, and lay 
dying. Why was there no might in Arthur's arm ? 
Had the magic sword lost its power ? Never ; but 
in the heart of Camelot, in the palace of the king, 
in the innermost circle of his own knighthood, 
there was the failure of love and loyalty. My 
friends, it is a question for us. If the Christ is 
baffled, if the kingdom of God is not making the 
advance it ought, what is infecting Christian 
hearts? Let us look into our own hearts to-day, 
and if, looking there, we stand condemned before 
our living, loving Lord, then let us with humility 
consecrate ourselves anew in love and loyalty to 
our Master. 

I would to God I had the power to arouse all 
our hearts to take up the onward march, carry- 
ing the banner of Jesus to victory. I was reading 
the other day a most interesting account of an 
incident at the battle of Magersfontein, in the 
Boer War, where in the early hours of a December 
morning, in the midst of a splashing rain, the 
Highland brigade was almost annihilated by a 
party of Boers lying in ambush. Column after 
column of those brave Highlanders went down 
that hill to certain death, and before the morning 
had passed no fewer than eight hundred and fifty- 



WORKING PRINCIPLE OF TRUE RELIGION 351 

six of them were killed, and as many more desper- 
ately wounded. During a lull in the battle, when 
it seemed as if the Highlanders had lost heart, 
there came wandering into an open space a piper 
with his pipes under his arm. An officer, Major 
Anson, who was himself killed an hour later, 
rushed up to the piper and said in the Scotch 
dialect, "Blaw, man, blaw your pipes!" The 
piper replied, "I canna ; my lips are dry." The 
officer tried to pull out his water bottle from his 
belt and give the poor fellow a drink, but he was 
unable to do so. The man knelt down at his side, 
and putting his mouth to the neck of the bottle 
drew a long draught, then into the muggy, misty 
air the skirl of the pipes was heard once more, 
playing the well known tune, "Hey, Johnny Cope, 
are you wakin' yet?" Gradually from different 
places his comrades began to gather around him. 
Parched with thirst and weary with the long fight, 
they stood there in the lines mopping their faces 
on their coat sleeves. And once more they charged, 
and, although at enormous loss, the advance was 
made. 

Dear friends of this great church, I pray God, 
and it is the supreme prayer of my heart in com- 
ing to you, that he may give me the power to wake 
the note of love and loyalty that shall stir our 
hearts to a real passion, an invincible passion 
of loving service for Jesus Christ! 



CHAPTEE XXVII 



God's Proprietorship in Human Souls 

Behold, all souls are mine. — EzeTc. 18. 4. 

As Dwight Hillis has graphically described it, 
the time was when science talked man down, made 
him a speck in an infinite universe, a grain of 
sand, a mere drifting leaf, unworthy of the notice 
of an infinite God. But the newer and better 
science lifts man up toward his rightful place. 
He is no longer a leaf drifting on the seashore, 
but the jeweled cup of God, set with a thousand 
diamond points, where all about him is only drift- 
ing sand. Our astronomers, through their long- 
visioned eyes, have analyzed the sun and stars and 
planets. They have parceled out the heavens, they 
have gone over the map of the sky, testing these 
distant worlds as to their heat, their cold, their 
gas, the possibility of vegetable and animal life. 
To their astonishment they have discovered that 
most of these shining bodies represent fire, in 
which any form of life is impossible. The rest 
represent gaseous conditions, where vegetable life 
is equally impossible. Turning to the planets they 
find that even the two upon which they have built 
their highest hopes prove disappointing. Mars 

352 



god's proprietorship in human souls 353 

has but a tiny fraction of the heat that our earth 
has. Vegetable and animal life is absolutely im- 
possible in the conditions which surround her. 
Neptune is found to have only one face toward 
the sun, the one side knowing the most dreadful 
cold, the other fierce heat, so that changes are so 
rapid as to make even the lowest forms of vegetable 
life impossible. And so the great scientists of the 
world have entirely retreated from the old position 
as to habitable worlds, and it seems now certain 
that "God has set his heart upon this little earth 
of ours. Physical science has driven us back 
again into a little earthly Garden of Eden. Again 
we stand out on the grass in the cool of the even- 
ing, and man keeps a tryst with Him who walks 
with his earthly child. Answering with adoring 
thoughts the gaze of yonder sky, man bows his 
head and whispers, 'My Father V " 

Our text is one of those sublime and splendid 
utterances of the Bible that lift us entirely out 
of the commonplace and exalt our thoughts to 
the highest plane. "All souls are mine," says 
God. Then the divine lineage must be found 
everywhere in human hearts, and man stands the 
test of investigation. Sin has wrought its terrible 
havoc upon him in every land, yet though there 
are long reaches of distance between the developed 
and educated and Christianized man and the poor 
waif races who have been ground down under the 



354 THE GEE AT THEMES OF THE BIB EE 

heel of ignorance and superstition and heathen- 
ism, yet the trace of the divine Fatherhood is to 
be found everywhere. 

Dawson, the English evangelist, says that the 
first time he heard the "Symphony to the New 
World" performed it produced a remarkable im- 
pression upon him. And as the symphony went 
on he was strangely impressed with a curious 
sense of something familiar about it. He could 
not make it out. There was all the great orchestra 
playing apparently magnificent music — and it 
was magnificent music — yet all the while he 
seemed to hear behind it something he had heard 
a thousand times before, and then he found out 
what it was. The "Symphony to the New World" 
is made up, for the main part, of Negro and plain- 
tive airs, such as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." 
And in this great symphony these Negro airs, which 
no one had thought much of, had been taken hold 
of by a great musician, who had turned them to 
wonderful use. So there is a melody running 
through the common heart of mankind at its poor- 
est, at its lowest. It is the pledge of our divine 
sonship. And Jesus Christ takes these threads of 
melody into his own most perfect life and shows 
what the music of humanity is. And, looking at 
Christ in his perfection, we look through Christ 
to man in his deepest degradation, whether it be 
in some heathen land or in the filthy cesspools of 



god's proprietorship in human souls 355 

our own great cities, and we say that man down 
there in the mire has the thread of melody in his 
heart that becomes glorious music in Christ. It 
is of the same sort. All it needs is but the divine 
musician. It is there waiting to be discovered, 
and we must remember this divinity and dignity 
of human nature if we are to feel about men as 
God and Christ feel. 

I 

God is the Father of all souls, and J esus Christ 
died to redeem all men, and the obligation of our 
sonship to God and our brotherhood to humanity 
everywhere is upon us. Paul clearly recognizes 
this in the opening of his letter to the Romans 
when he says: "I am debtor both to the Greeks, 
and to the barbarians; both to the wise, and to 
the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready 
to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. 
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ : for 
it is the power of God unto salvation to every one 
that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the 
Greek." 

If Paul were a debtor in his day to every man 
who had not heard the Gospel, how much more are 
we debtors in our day to our brothers and sisters 
who still live in darkness. We are the heirs of the 
ages. For us heroes have fought and martyrs 
have died ; for us prophets and psalmists have 



356 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

spoken and sung; all the glory of the Christian 
dispensation, with its long train of growing civili- 
zation, has fallen like a mantle about our shoul- 
ders. Our minds and hearts have been enriched 
with the bounty of God in Jesus Christ. If Paul 
had to say, "I am debtor, both to the Greeks and 
to the barbarians," how can we escape saying, "I 
am debtor to the Chinaman, and the Hindu, and 
the African, and the lonely dwellers in the isles 
of the seas" ? 

The needs of our brothers and sisters are very 
great in many parts of the world. Dr. Karl W. 
Kumm, a famous Christian traveler in Oriental 
lands, tells many things that would stir the blood 
of any man or woman with a true heart. In the 
native quarter of Alexandria, in Egypt, he sat 
one evening at his window. A woman beneath his 
room had a little boy who was very fond of mak- 
ing mud pies in front of the house. He saw her 
step into the doorway and call the little fellow. 
"Come in, darling: don't get your clothes so 
dirty. Come in, sweet one." No answer from the 
little four-year-old. 

The mother stepped into the street, looking 
about to see that there were no men near to watch 
her. She laid kind, motherly hands on the child 
to take him into the house. "Come, little one. I 
will give you sweets. Come !" Her husband was 
at that moment coming around the next corner. 



god's proprietorship in human souls 357 

and stood still to see what would happen. What 
did happen was this: the child turned round on 
his mother, and doubling up his little dirty fist, he 
beat her right in the face, and snarled, "Daughter 
of a dog!" tearing himself loose. The father 
stepped up. To do what ? To punish his child ? 
O, no. To pat his brave little son on the back, 
smile upon him, and say: "Brave little boy! 
Thou magnificent little fellow." Proud of a son 
who could treat a mother thus ! Christian women, 
are you not debtor to these millions of mothers who 
are thus ground down from birth to death and 
dwarfed through all eternity ? 

Only four years ago Dr. Kumm was traveling 
in the south of Tripoli, when he met a slave cara- 
van — some three hundred camels, loaded with 
ostrich feathers, ivory, and morocco skins, and 
some twenty or thirty little slave girls straggling 
along behind. Most of them were nothing but 
skin and bones, with sore feet, after that terrible 
journey of fifteen hundred miles or more over 
the burning wastes of the great Sahara Desert, 
oftentimes for seven or eight days without water, 
except that which could be carried in skins on 
the backs of camels. Dr. Kumm spoke to one of 
the men in charge, and said, "Surely you cannot 
take these slave children into Tripoli?" He 
smiled. Dr. Kumm said, "The consuls would 
not allow it." 



358 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

He smiled and asked in turn, "What do the 
consuls know about it?" 

"But what do you do with these children ?" the 
Doctor persisted. 

"We take them to the gardens, to the houses of 
the rich Arabs. Then at evening time we put 
them on board a Turkish vessel, and send them 
to Asia Minor and to Constantinople — to the 
harems of the rich Turks" — to a life of misery in 
a far-off country. 

Christian mothers and fathers, think of these 
little girls, twelve years old, walking through a 
burning tropical sun, almost without clothing, very 
little food, oftentimes in sore want of water, no 
one to cheer them, for fifteen hundred miles 
through the desert, along one of the great high- 
ways of slavery, walking to their doom. In God's 
name, are we not debtors to these little girls, and 
the mothers from whom they were stolen or who 
were probably murdered when they were stolen ? 
Every missionary post added to the beacon lights 
of Christ's gospel in that dark continent hastens 
the day when this still open sore of the world shall 
be healed. 

We cannot take refuge with Cain, and ask, 
"Am I my brother's keeper ?" It is within our 
power to help, and to the limit of our power we 
must help, or we shall not clear our own skirts of 
the blood of our fellows. Do you remember Hood's 



god's proprietorship in human souls 359 

poem which he calls "The Lady's Dream" ? And 
do you recall how he represents those whom she 
might have befriended as passing before her in a 
ghastly procession? She exclaims in passionate 
despair : 

"The wounds I might have healed, 

The human sorrow and smart; 
And it was never in my soul 

To play so ill a part; 
But evil is wrought for want of thought 

As well as want of heart. 

"Each pleading look that long ago 

I scanned with heedless eye, 
Each face was gazing as plainly there 

As when I passed it by; 
Woe, woe for me if the past should be 

Thus present when I die. 

"No need of sulphurous lake, 

No need of fiery coal; 
But only that crowd of human kind 

Who wanted pity and dole; 
In everlasting retrospect 

Will wring my sinful soul. ,, 

These lines cannot fail to remind lis of those 
terrible words of Jesus himself, when, in describ- 
ing the last accounting, he says it shall be said 
by Him that sitteth on the throne to those who 
have neglected their opportunities toward their 
brethren: "Depart from me, . . . for I was 
an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was 



360 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

thirsty, and ye gave me no drink : I was a stranger, 
and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me 
not : sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 
Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, 
when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a 
stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison; and did 
not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer 
them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch 
as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye 
did it not to me." 

If we shall make our Christianity irresistibly 
convincing to the world of our day, we must, to 
our limit, in Christ's spirit, and in his name and 
power, do Christ's work to the ends of the earth. 
Dr. Morgan Gibbon went one Sunday morning, 
in the beautiful city of Lombardy, Milan, to the 
white marble cathedral, which is one of the seven 
wonders of the modern world. It was filled with 
worshipers. It was the day when the relics of the 
patron saint of the church, Carl Borromeo, were 
displayed on the altar. He stood a little behind 
that altar. People were crowding in front of 
the relics, and after awhile his attention was called 
to a window behind him. It was a marvelous 
creation. It was a work of art in which the artist 
sought, in his particular medium, to present the 
gospel of the religion of J esus. He had divided his 
window into a large number of panels, and every 
panel or pane contained a picture, and every 



GOD r S PROPRIETORSHIP IN HUMAN SOULS 361 

picture was taken from the four Gospels. When- 
ever you looked at this window you saw Jesus 
Christ — Jesus healing the sick, Jesus blessing the 
children, Jesus at the well, Jesus washing the 
disciples' feet, Jesus on the cross. It was simply 
ablaze with Christ — with the beautiful deeds of 
Christ, with all the irresistible grace of that great 
life. And as you looked you felt: "There is a 
religion there that no lapse of time can ever touch, 
that no criticism can affect, no argument can 
overthrow. It goes straight to the heart. It 
makes the appeal that beauty makes. It takes you 
captive. You have only got to see it to know it is 
true !" But as he looked from the window to the 
altar and saw that superstitious crowd gathering 
about the relics of the dead, Dr. Gibbon says that 
he felt that he was standing between two different 
religions; two absolutely different religions; that 
there was nothing whatever in common between 
the religion of the window and the religion of 
relics. There is a message here for us. A religion 
that simply nurses its creed and its traditions for 
its own luxurious selfishness is a useless thing. 
But our glorious Christianity, lived by great- 
hearted men and women who love Christ and are 
inspired by him, and who reach to the ends of the 
eartih. to cleanse the leper, to free the slave, to 
open the eyes of the blind, and waken dead hearts 
into life, must charm all mankind ! 



362 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



II 

God's proprietorship in human souls is evi- 
denced by the fact that no tribe has been found so 
poor in human quality that it cannot respond to 
the divine message. A Wesleyan missionary came 
back two or three years ago from South Africa 
and told of a native class meeting where an old 
gray-haired woman, her shriveled face drawn with 
emotion, rose and said, "Before the missionary 
came my soul was a thing I could not fathom, 
but my heart was bleeding for God." 

When Darwin first landed on the bleak shore 
of Tierra del Fuego, he found savages there of so 
low a grade that he declared them below the line 
of redemption in any form. In his "Naturalist's 
Voyage" he says: "They are men whose very 
signs and expressions are less intelligible to us 
than those of the domesticated animals, men who 
do not possess the instincts of these animals, nor 
yet appear to boast of human reason; or, at least, 
of arts consequent on that reason." Twenty-five 
years later Darwin touched that same shore after 
missionaries had been at work for that brief space 
of time, and, like an honest man, convinced by 
facts, he said he could not have believed that such 
a change was within the range of possibility, So 
the men of Uganda, the savages of ~New Guinea, 
the martyrs of the Boxer movement in China, all 
show that Christ, if his love has but an oppor- 



god's proprietorship in human souls 363 

tunity, can write his name on every kind of 
human heart, and stamp his image on every 
human face. 

E. J. Peck, who tells the story of the Eskimos, 
gives us the record of souls in those frozen regions 
of the ISTorth that lay like dead seeds beneath the 
snow, but awoke to life when once the warmth of 
the Sun of Righteousness had begun to penetrate 
the dark doors of their "igloos" upon the frozen 
sea. 

John G. Woolley, on a recent tour of the world, 
made a voyage in the South Seas, visiting the Fiji 
Islands. In the whole history of moral degra- 
dation the Fiji Islands probably lead the world. 
In the early days of the nineteenth century it was 
known by sea captains and travelers as "The Hell 
of the Pacific." Up to 1835, when two Wesleyan 
missionaries took their lives in their hands and 
landed at Lakemba to preach the gospel of Christ, 
the darkest blot upon the earth was the group of 
two hundred and fifty beautiful islands. The peo- 
ple were polygamists ; they were infanticides ; 
women were treated as beasts of burden ; wives were 
killed when their husbands died, and their bodies 
were used to line his grave and make it soft. The 
feeble old men and women were buried alive by 
their children ; they were cannibals ; human sacri- 
fices entered into all their important undertakings. 
Victims who were to be eaten were bound and 



364 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

placed alive in the ovens; theft and lying were 
universal. When a chief launched a new canoe 
the rollers on which it was made to slide down the 
shore into the water were living men. When the 
new canoe was ready for use ten men were 
slaughtered in it, as a dedication ceremony. This 
was the condition when Christianity was intro- 
duced, and the facts are not exaggerated. As late 
as 1840 the United States Exploring Expedition, 
commanded by Commodore Wilkes, and including 
such reliable men as Dana, Maury, and Pickering, 
gave corroboration to the ghastly stories of former 
travelers, whose records were disbelieved because 
it was deemed impossible that the human race 
could be sunk so low. 

But Mr. Woolley bears new testimony to the 
marvelous fact that this former "Hell of the 
Pacific" has become transformed by the gospel of 
Christ, until the inhabitants of the Fiji Islands 
would average high among the most civilized 
nations in the world. Ninety per cent of all the 
inhabitants of the% islands are members of the 
Wesley an- ]\f ethodist Church, and practically all 
are professed Christians. These people, whose 
grandfathers were cannibals, are now generous, 
honest, and hospitable, exhibiting in a high degree 
the graces of the Spirit. God was true when he 
said, "Behold, all souls are mine." Let us be true 
to God and win all souls back to him. 



god's proprietorship in human souls 365 



III 

Our theme suggests to us the motor power of 
Christian missions. In referring to the motive for 
missionary work we found our illustration in the 
words of Paul. In assuring ourselves of the 
motor power essential to our success, we may also 
turn to him. ( Paul says, "Unto me, who am less 
than the least of all saints, was this grace given, 
to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable 
riches of Christ." Dr. John Clifford says that 
Saul of Tarsus was a pauper ; but Paul of Damas- 
cus had annexed a mine without a bottom, a mine 
of incorruptible gold. Try to assess his wealth! 
Take full stock of the addition he has made to 
his personality by becoming a Christian; see him 
in his original poverty, shut down and shut up in 
the body of his death, flung aside as a derelict, 
"wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked" ; 
and now behold him! He has bought of Christ 
the white garments in which he is clothed; eye 
salve with which he sees ; gold refined in the fire, 
with which he is rich — but how rich you cannot 
say, unless you have by searching found out the 
Almighty and know the mind of the Lord. For 
he has, yes ! — this is the awe-inspiring fact — he 
has annexed God, and in Christ is one with him, 
with the whole of God; God's infinity supplying 
all his needs, and flooding him with increasing- 
strength to work for the salvation of the lost 



366 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

human race. Think of it ! God is made to him 
inexhaustible forces of liberation and illumina- 
tion, wisdom and ministry. Just as steam is 
made to Watt and his successors the power of 
locomotion, and electricity is made to Cyrus Field 
and his successors down to Thomas Edison the 
power of communication, so Christ is made from 
God power and wisdom for salvation. 

I call you into partnership with Paul in this 
high fellowship with Jesus Christ in the work of 
blessing humanity. I do not call you to any super- 
ficial, holiday playing at Christianity; but I call 
you to give yourself to God, that he may be able 
to give himself to you. I call you to give your 
purse, your brains, your tongue, your time, your 
home, your children to God, that he may glorify 
them all. Religion means sacrifice and consecra- 
tion ; but, believe me, my brother, the religion that 
costs is the religion that blesses. Some one has 
said that the portal frowns gloomy with "Sacrifice" 
written above; you enter with shrinking steps, 
when, lo, a radiance your life has never known, a 
bliss that is only to be reached through the portal 
of sacrifice. Young Christians, the life that costs, 
believe me, is the life that is worth living. Give 
yourself to Christ, not for your own salvation 
only, but for his world-wide crusade, and you will 
find life as romantic, as worth living, to-day as in 
any great heroic age of the past. 



god's proprietorship m human souls 367 

I call you to a partnership in a victorious 
movement. I do not call you to a losing fight. 
Christ will win. All souls belong to God. All that 
is needed to capture the world is for us to show it 
a church transfigured by the presence and spirit of 
Christ. Jesus said, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw 
all men unto me." We shall win. Dr. Watkin- 
son said the other day that he had heard of some 
erratic German astronomer who says he has found 
out that the sun is a bubble, and he says he can 
demonstrate it. Watkinson wittily says that that 
astronomer is another bubble. But, mind, if the 
sun is a bubble, it is a wonderful bubble. It is, 
as Milton says, of this great world, eye and soul. 
It touches the hills and they shine in green ver- 
dure; it fills the valleys with corn; it creates the 
morning. So now and then you hear some erratic 
and self-sufficient skeptic who says about this 
Bible that it is a bubble. But let us remember, 
and let the remembrance inspire our hearts, that 
this Bible never shines into a cottage but it makes 
it more glorious than a king's palace; it never 
brings its influence to bear on a poor fallen 
wretch in tihe gutter but he stands upon his feet 
redeemed. Our missionaries never take it into a 
heathen land but blossoms spring out. It changes 
the hells of earth into heavens of peace. Let us 
carry this Bible and this gospel, in the strength of 
God, to all the souls which belong to him ! 



CHAPTEE XXVIII 



The Twin Seals of Love and Power 

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine 
arm. — Song of Solomon 8. 6: 

The paragraph to which this sentence forms 
the open door is one of those literary gems with 
which the Bible abounds. It is the appeal of 
love for preeminence, its argument for being 
given the chief place. In all the literature of 
love there is not a more splendid or majestic 
passage. "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as 
a seal upon thine arm : for love is strong as death ; 
jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof 
are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement 
flame. Many waters cannot quench love ; neither 
can the floods drown it. If a man would give all 
the substance of his house for love, it would utterly 
be contemned." 

If we take this to be a literal love story, we have 
a woman asking her kingly lover to have her name 
or likeness stamped upon her beloved's heart and 
arm ; on his breast above his heart as the seat of 
affection, and on his arm where it might be con- 
stantly in view. There is suggested the desire of 
every loving heart to be kept in tender remem- 
brance by one who is the object of its love. Love 

368 



THE TWIST SEALS OF LOVE AND POWEB 369 

must have love in return. There is a suggestion, 
also, of a fear that love might be diminished by 
distance, especially where it may have rivals. 
Love trembles at the thought of the proverb prov- 
ing true, "Out of sight, out of mind." And so to 
be set as a seal upon breast and arm, as a reminder 
of the deathless character of her affection, and of 
the preciousness of a love which all the wealth of 
Solomon could not have bought and which could 
be repaid only by his love in return, is the request 
which is made by this devoted soul. 

We do no violence to Scripture if we spiritual- 
ize this beautiful incident. It is in harmony with 
the spirit of God's revelation to us concerning his 
love for us in Jesus Christ and our love for him 
which is aroused in return. Paul says concern- 
ing our love for Christ that "We love him, because 
he first loved us." The great sacrifice of Christ 
in our behalf, the love that saw us in our sins and 
put aside the glory of heaven to come down to 
earth and suffer and die in our stead, is surely a 
love which can never be repaid except by love 
itself. 

This passage suggests to me another meaning, 
however, which is very comforting to my own 
heart, and which I hope may comfort us all. The 
arm is the symbol of strength and power, and 
when a trusting woman asks to be set as a seal 
upon her beloved's arm does it not mean that the 



370 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

strength of that arm is pledged for her protection ? 
A seal in those old days was used in the place of 
a signature to a deed, or a compact of the most 
sacred kind. To be set as a seal upon the arm of 
a strong king, like Solomon, meant that the power 
of the great king was pledged for the defense of 
the woman who loved him. She may have been as 
weak as the vine clinging to the giant tree, but 
all the strength of the king became hers if the 
seal of this sacred compact was set upon his arm. 

If we set upon this story the seal of the Spirit, 
then it can suggest to us only the splendid strength 
of Christian character. And the Christian, if he 
be true and genuine, is the strongest, most force- 
ful human character in the world, inasmuch as 
goodness is stronger than evil, purity stronger than 
vice, sobriety stronger than drunkenness, peace 
stronger than strife, joy more forceful than sor- 
row. Inasmuch as love is stronger than hate, or, 
indeed, God stronger than the devil, so much 
greater is the strength and forcefulness of true 
Christian character than any personality a wicked 
world can present. And the character which is 
presented by Christ and Paul as the ideal Chris- 
tian is ever a strong, forceful personality. The 
manliness of Jesus and Paul stands out as a model 
of the strength of the noblest chivalry. Christians 
cannot be weaklings. We must be "good soldiers 
of Jesus Christ." 



THE TWIN SEALS OF LOVE AND POWER 37l 

Yet it is still another thought upon which I 
wish to put the emphasis in our study at this time. 
This loving woman was not satisfied with a com- 
pact which gave her all the strength of Solomon's 
kingdom. That might satisfy an ambitious adven- 
turess, but it could never satisfy a sincerely loving 
heart. She longed for something more than that, 
and so makes her appeal, "Set me as a seal upon 
thine heart." If we spiritualize that we shall 
understand the poet who sings : 

Set me as a seal upon thine arm, 
On that mighty place of mighty strength, 
For all other arms to dust at length, 
Turn, dear Lord. 

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, 
On that mighty place of mighty love, 
For all other hearts must cease to move, 
But thine, dear Lord. 

And thus ever on thine arm and heart, 
In a covenant thou canst not break, 
Thou'lt remember, though I sleep or wake, 
I am thine, dear Lord. 

If we are thus set as a seal upon the heart of 
Christ, we shall not only have the strength of 
his mighty arm to sustain us in the hour of weak- 
ness and temptation, but we shall be adorned with 
the beauty of his love; the sweetness of his sym- 
pathy and tenderness shall be given to us. We 
shall not only be strong in goodness and justice 
and truth, but also beautified by love. 



372 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

Is not that the great need of the world to-day ? 
Is it not the crying need of all civilization that 
we shall have great characters, strong to do and 
dare and achieve, but whose strength shall be 
softened and beautified by the gentleness of Jesus 
Christ ? We are living in a time when strong 
men abound. There are more giants in these 
days than at any time in the history of the world. 
Men spring up on every side who have the genius 
to seize the mighty forces of nature and master 
them and make them their servants. In iron and 
coal and oil and gas and electricity, and, indeed, 
every elemental force of the world in which we 
live, men are rising up to seize and with the strong 
arm to control and master them for their own 
good, and, incidentally if not otherwise, for the 
good of humanity. 

We hear a deal of talk in our time about cor- 
porations and trusts, and we see in this multipli- 
cation of wealth opportunities for the great aggre- 
gation of wealth into a few hands until some people 
are frightened and can see only ruin in the out- 
look. Is it not, after all, the old struggle of the 
centuries after power ? And the result must 
depend altogether on how the power is used. We 
do not care how strong a man is if his strength 
be controlled and adorned by love. If his strength 
be governed by selfishness, then evil will come 
from his power. 



THE TWIN SEALS OF LOVE AND POWER 373 

If all strong men had the spirit of J esus Christ, 
there would surely be no crying out against great 
strength in single hands. Christ exercised the 
most marvelous power over nature and over human 
life. If he had used his strength to speak into 
being storms to sweep away villages and ship- 
wreck the boats of the fishermen, he would have 
been a man of terror. But when he used his 
power to speak the taunting waves into quiet with 
his words of, "Peace, be still," his power was a 
benediction and not a threat. If he had used his 
power to make men deaf or blind or lame or dumb, 
or to bewitch them with demoniac spirits, what a 
curse his strange control over human nature would 
have been to the people with whom he lived ! But 
when he went about among them opening deaf 
ears, causing blind eyes to see, making the lame to 
leap for joy, healing the lepers, dispossessing 
devils, and raising the dead, his every step was a 
blessing, and his great power so beautified by love 
made him the most magnetic character the world 
has ever seen. 

Now, that is what God is trying to do for the 
whole world — to bring strength and beauty to- 
gether. As Professor Home says with striking 
force, strong characters are not rare, and beauti- 
ful characters are not rare ; but characters that are 
both strong and beautiful are far too rare. It 
is so difficult to be firm and not to be hard, to be 



374 THE GEE AT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

inflexibly just and not to be cold, to have the solid 
virtues that make for strength and with them the 
soft and gracious qualities that command our love. 
Some men and women have the decorative virtues. 
They are full of generosity, noble impulse, charity, 
magnanimity, and enthusiasm; but they have not 
with these the strength of mind and will which 
makes for sound justice and common sense. Some 
people, on the other hand, have only the funda- 
mental qualities. They are just, but they cannot 
be generous ; honest, but never liberal ; truthful, 
but never merciful ; they have principle, but they 
have never yielded to a wise enthusiasm or been 
moved out of their slow, plodding habits by some 
sacred zeal for a holy cause. The world yields to 
the strong men ; it admires them, it honors them ; 
but it does not love them. They command its 
respect, but they have no power to arouse its affec- 
tion. On the other hand, the world's heart is 
drawn out to the beautiful lives, but it often dis- 
covers, to its pain, that it must not lean upon 
them. They are not to be trusted in hours of 
real trial and perplexity. What they gain in 
heart they seem to lose in head ; and we grow con- 
scious that while they are tender, generous, and 
kind, they are not wise. And so the sad fact 
remains that there are comparatively few who are 
not only strong, but beautiful, and are not only 
beautiful, but strong. 



THE TWU5T SEALS OF LOVE AND POWER 375 

Yet I return to the statement that it is the 
supreme mission of Christianity in this world to 
reproduce the miracle of J esus Christ in the incar- 
nation of his union of strength and love in every 
man and woman among us. I think we are too 
ready to excuse ourselves for the lack of the 
gracious and gentle virtues. Many think of 
gentleness and meekness and forbearance and 
patience and all those virtues that sweeten human 
intercourse very much as some rude and rugged 
backwoodsman, conscious of his own strong physi- 
cal ability and honest straightforwardness, is likely 
to think of fashionably cut clothing and easy man- 
ners and the little ceremonies and etiquette of 
polite society. He has for them, at the best, a sort 
of good-humored contempt. They are all right, 
he thinks, for men and women with no work to 
do and no serious concerns of life to consider, but 
the great fundamentals of honesty and genuine- 
ness, frankness and sincerity seem so much more 
important to him that all the gentler graces are, 
to his mind, things to be relegated to women and 
children. So many a man, conscious of his honor 
and strength, thinks far too little of the great 
addition which would be made to his strength and 
the glory which would come to him if it were 
clothed upon with the beauty of love. 

If God cares for beauty, and thinks it worth 
while to go to the trouble of crowning a tree with 



376 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

leaves, of growing mosses and vines over the rock, 
of spreading a green carpet over the hillside, of 
planting flower beds in the meadow and the valley, 
of robing the autumn forest in gorgeous colors and 
burnishing all the fields of toil with yellow gold ; 
if God thinks it worth while to clothe the winter 
world in white; to fill the midnight sky with 
jewels ; to make every morning sunrise and every 
evening sunset glorious as a hallelujah chorus of 
angels, then surely we cannot permit ourselves 
for a moment to believe that beauty is not a neces- 
sary thing. 

But, after all, our greatest illustration must be 
the life of Jesus himself. In this one case God 
has shown us what he wants in a man, and in him 
we have all the beauty and glory of humanity in 
a single character. In him we see the strength 
of the giant, the forbearance of the saint, the cour- 
age of the hero, the loving sympathy of a woman, 
the simplicity and confidence of a child. In put- 
ting on the "new man" God intends that we shall 
put on all of these glorious qualities. 

I know a man in an eastern town who has 
unlimited wealth at his command, and whose 
learning and taste and poetic fancy have inspired 
him with the idea of gathering together in spacious 
conservatories the most beautiful plants and 
flowers from all parts of the world. His agents 
are traveling in every land, searching far and 



THE TWIN SEALS OF LOVE AND POWER 377 

wide, and sending home, as they discover them, 
consignments of noble trees, rare shrubs, and 
beautiful flowers. From the jungles of India, from 
the great forests of South America, from the val- 
ley of the Congo, and from the mountains of 
Switzerland come these beautiful things, until 
his flower palaces are glorious with the gathered 
loveliness of the ends of the earth. 

The work of building up the Christlike charac- 
ter is not unlike that. We are to send out our 
living thoughts into all quarters of literature and 
art and religion ; into all the life of living men 
and women; into all the hopes of immortality in 
heaven ; into all the realms of spiritual meditation 
and communion, and seize " whatsoever things are 
true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever 
things are just, whatsoever things are pure, what- 
soever things are lovely," and bring them into our 
lives and set them to the music of Christian living. 
As another has well said, "Admiration is useless 
unless it turns to imitation." When Hooker, the 
naturalist, was in the Himalayas, he was once so 
placed as to be obliged to throw away specimen 
after specimen of new flowers. He had nowhere 
to put them. Do we not often gaze with delight 
upon the beauty of some saintly personality, and 
then quietly drop it as though there was nothing 
more to be done? We wander amazed amid the 
blossoms of a brilliant character, and go home to 



378 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

our artificial flowers, putting etiquette for human- 
ity and politeness in the room of love. All spirit- 
ual developments that are possible for any soul 
in Jesus Christ are possible for us. We have 
seldom seen, as yet, what Christ can do with a soul 
absolutely surrendered to him. "Blessed be the 
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in 
the heavenly places in Christ." God help us to 
realize this ! As James Dunk says : "Be lovely 
in thy doing, so shalt thou give rapture to God, 
whose beauty-thirst is infinite. Be lovely because, 
too, there is in beauty immeasurable power." 
Bayne says, "Tennyson's chief mark is charm." 
It is by this charm he holds not only Englishmen 
but all civilized humanity. So Christ is the 
creator of charm in character. Love is the su- 
preme magnetism. Every Christian personality 
may be charming. And if we surrender ourselves 
completely to that divine charm of soul-beauty, 
few will be able to resist the holy fascination. 
"Rare soul-beauty fascinates the world. It sur- 
prises them. They have grown to think it impos- 
sible, and they are frequently wearied to death by 
the ruck of men, the repellent crowd with the 
coarse passions, and their showy but sickening 
unrealities. Sinners nauseate each other. How 
they long at times to see a charming soul, full 
of Christlike beauty ! God is supreme loveliness, 



THE TWIN SEALS OF LOVE AND POWER 379 

but 'No man hath seen God at any time.' Yet there 
is a way of bringing God within eyeshot. 'If we 
love one another, God abideth in us. 5 Then he is 
seen." 

The seal General Gordon used on all the docu- 
ments he signed while shut up in Khartoum had 
a history of exceeding interest. A friend named 
Floyer volunteered to prepare Gordon a seal with 
his name in Arabic characters upon it. For this 
purpose he chose an old coin, which he partially 
melted and refashioned. When the seal was com- 
pleted it was found that two words that had 
been on the coin were still legible. The words 
were in Arabic and signified, "The Messenger of 
God." Gordon noticed them and was much 
pleased, and in a letter to his friend said his daily 
prayer was that he might always remember to be 
as the messenger of God to the Soudan people. 
It is our highest honor that we may each of us be 
the messenger of God in bearing forth the Christly 
character before the gaze of our fellow men. 

I have no doubt I speak to many who are con- 
scious of a deep and holy longing to realize this 
life of strength and love. You feel within your- 
self the stirring of a nobler and sweeter life than 
you have yet lived. You have dreamed of it, and 
in holy vision hours it has seemed possible, but 
you have never had the courage to invoke the aid 
of the Holy Spirit to set your dream to music in 



380 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

the daily deeds of common living. James Whit- 
comb Riley has a most beautiful poem, entitled, 
"The Song I ISTever Sing/' which gives voice to 
these haunting premonitions of nobler life which 
many of us feel. His song runs : 

As when in dreams we sometimes hear 

A melody so faint and fine 
And musically sweet and clear 
It flavors all the atmosphere 
With harmony divine, — 

So, often in my waking dreams, 
I hear a melody that seems 
Like fairy voices whispering 
To me the song I never sing. 

Sometimes when brooding o'er the years 

My lavish youth has thrown away — 
When all the glowing past appears 
But as a mirage that my tears 
Have crumbled to decay — 
I thrill to find the ache and pain 
Of my remorse is stilled again, 
As, forward bent and listening, 
I hear the song I never sing. 

O nameless lay, sing clear and strong, 

Pour down thy melody divine, 
Till purifying floods of song 
Have washed away the stains of wrong 
That dim this soul of mine! 
O woo me near and nearer thee, 
Till my glad lips may catch the key, 
And with a voice unwavering, 
Join in the song I never sing. 



CHAPTEE XXIX 



The Chbistmas Guest 

They sought therefore for Jesus, and spake one with 
another, as they stood in the temple, What think ye? 
That he will not come to the feast? — John 11. 56. 

This question had its origin, no doubt, in a 
great variety of motives. Doubtless the motive in 
most cases was curiosity. The fame of J esus had 
spread throughout the country. They had heard 
of his wonderful works — stories concerned with 
his opening the eyes of the blind, making deaf 
men to hear, cleansing lepers, and causing lame 
and crippled people to walk and run, and last of 
all had come the startling announcement of his 
bringing Lazarus back from the grave. This 
miracle had been the talk of the country in an 
ever-widening circle for many weeks, and they had 
come up from the towns and villages and country 
places to the feast, hoping more than for anything 
else that they might see Jesus. Of course among 
them were some sullen and vicious Pharisees who 
hoped to see him that they might do him harm ; 
but the great multitude felt a true desire to see 
him, and to hear from his own lips the messages 
of wisdom. To see Jesus and hear him spea&, 
and possibly be healed by him, was the prevail- 
ing motive that had drawn the people to the feast r 

381 



382 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

and so on every lip was the question anxiousl/ 
asked, "Will he come to the feast ?" 

We are drawing near to our feast of Christmas 
good cheer, and I can imagine no theme more 
appropriate to the occasion and no theme with 
more promise of profit in it than that we should 
ask ourselves the question, "How can I insure the 
presence of Jesus as my guest at Christmas time ?" 

I 

Since we are assured in God's Word that J esus 
is "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever," we 
have some sure ground of faith as to the conditions 
which are necessary to assure to us the presence of 
Jesus as our Christmas guest. In the first place 
we know that if we hold Christ in loving remem- 
brance, and think about him, recalling his kind- 
nesses, and converse with our friends about his 
loving personality, he will be with us as our guest 
and commune with us. 

One of the sweetest incidents in all the ITew 
Testament is the story of Christ's appearance to 
the two disciples, in all probability Cleopas and 
his wife, who on the morning after the resurrec- 
tion walked out of Jerusalem to their home in 
Emmaus. As they went they conversed about 
their experiences with Christ; they talked over 
all they had known of him ; and as they talked the 
tears rolled down their cheeks, and their hearts 



THE CHRISTMAS GUEST 



383 



melted. And in the midst of their conversation, 
while they were yet a long way from their destina- 
tion, Jesus came and walked with them. Their 
eyes were holden so they did not recognize him, 
and the Stranger, as they took him to be, with 
sympathetic kindness deferentially asked them 
what was the subject of their conversation, which 
evidently gave them such great sadness. And they 
told him that they had been talking about Jesus, a 
wonderful personality who had lived a life of great 
purity and beauty, who had wrought marvelous 
deeds of kindness and love, and who had been 
taken by wicked hands and crucified, and it was 
now the third day since his death, and some of 
the women among his friends who had gone to 
the tomb in the morning had brought back news 
of his resurrection, and they knew not what to 
think. Then the Stranger began to talk to them 
about the Old Testament Scriptures, and he 
recalled the prophecies to their minds, and showed 
thern with great clearness how the death and resur- 
rection of Christ were part and parcel of the 
prophecies of the old prophets, and as he talked 
their sadness dropped from them. Their tears were 
dried, their heavy hearts became buoyant, and 
their cheeks flushed with hope and faith. About 
this time they came near to their home, and the 
mysterious Stranger was bidding them farewell 
and going on his way. But the conversation had 



384 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

been such a comfort to their hearts that they could 
not bear to have him leave them. So they begged 
and entreated him to go in with them and spend 
the night as their guest. lie went in with them 
and tarried until the evening meal was spread, and 
when they sat down at the table he took the place 
as host rather than guest, and asked a blessing upon 
the food. And as he did so their eyes were opened, 
and they knew him. And after he was gone on 
his way, they said one to another, with throbbing 
hearts, eyes full of tenderness, cheeks all aglow, 
and voices soft with love, "Did not our hearts burn 
within us while he talked to us by the way, and 
opened to us the Scriptures ?" 

This is a sure way to have Jesus with you on 
Christmas Day. Think of him lovingly, tenderly 
—talk about him to your friends, recall all his 
kindness and mercy, and the dearest guest in all 
your company on Christmas Day will be your 
Saviour and your Lord. 

II 

He will come if you feel your need of him and 
send for him. Christ had some friends who lived 
in Bethany — Mary, Martha, and their brother 
Lazarus. During the absence of Jesus from the 
immediate vicinity Lazarus sickened and died. 
We can imagine how the hearts of those sisters 
yearned for Christ, who was their dear friend. 



THE CHRISTMAS GUEST 



385 



during those days of illness. They had witnessed 
so many of his deeds of kindness and of healing 
that they would say to each other every day and 
almost every hour in the day, "If only Jesus were 
here, I am sure he would but lay his hand upon the 
brow of our brother and the fever would be cooled." 
But they were unable to get track of him until 
Lazarus was dead. Christ immediately responded 
when their message reached him, telling his dis- 
ciples that they must go at once to Bethany. 
When they drew near Martha ran out to meet 
Jesus, with the despairing cry upon her lips, "If 
thou hadst been here, my brother had not died!" 
And Christ had a long and remarkable conversa- 
tion with her. Later he came into the house and 
asked for Mary, and they came to her and said, 
"The Master is come and calleth for thee !" And 
Mary went away to sit at his feet and listen to 
the great spiritual comfort that came from his 
lips. Afterward he went with them to the grave 
and wept with them, but brought back their 
brother again from the dead. Now, let us not put 
all this away from us as a thing of the past. With 
Jesus there is no past; it is always present. He 
is always God manifest in the flesh. He is for- 
ever to all ages Immanuel — God with us. And 
he is with us to-day, if we invite him, as surely 
and as tenderly as in any other age of the world. 



I have seen a most interesting story of the 




386 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

"Black Death/' In the year 1353 one of the great- 
est pestilences recorded in history had swept over 
every country in Europe, claiming its dead by 
unnumbered thousands. Men fled in terror from 
their fellow men, in awful fear of their breath or 
touch, and for weeks sustained a strange, weird 
siege in solitude. In their terrible fear men be- 
came like wild beasts, refusing even the cup of 
cold water and the simplest service through dread 
of contamination. 

So it continued until Christmas Eve, when one 
man in Goldberg, believing himself the only 
inhabitant of the city left alive, unbarred his door 
at dead of night, and went forth into the air. 
He knew that it was Christmas, and as he recalled 
other Christmases, with their sacred joys and 
their festivity, he lifted up his voice in a song : 

"To us this day is born a child, 

God with us! 
His mother is a virgin mildj 

God with us! 
God with us! Against us who dare be?" 

As he sang, through a barred door came another 
voice in response to his own, and then the door 
was flung wide, and a man joined him in the street 
and sang with him. Together they marched 
through the town, giving it its first audible sound 
save wails and cries of terror since the plague 
descended upon it. 



THE CHRISTMAS GUEST 



387 



The song woke strange echoes. From their liv- 
ing tombs men, women, and children came forth to 
the number of twenty-five — all that were left of 
the town — and marching through the death- 
stricken streets, they sang with new courage: 
"God with us ! Against us who dare be ?" 

Whether it was that the plague had spent its 
violence, or, which is more probable, that the 
minds of the survivors were more serene, none 
of this little band died of the "Black Death." 
They returned to their homes, buried their dead, 
and the town began to awake. The incident was 
remembered, and for centuries the town continued 
to meet each Christmas Eve at midnight, and at 
two o'clock march through the streets singing in 
triumph: "God with us! Against us who dare 
be?" ) 

III 

If you have come to Christmas time with a 
lonely sense of failure and disappointment, so that 
you let your heart go out wishing for Jesus, you 
may be sure of his coming to bless your Christmas 
and add to its cheer. Do you not remember that 
time between Christ's resurrection and his ascen- 
sion, when some of the disciples were together, and 
were anxious and uncertain, not fully understand- 
ing the appearances and disappearances of Jesus, 
and Peter said he was going fishing ? Some of his 
friends and the friends of Jesus went with him. 



388 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

They fished all night without success. In the 
morning, just as the dawn was coming on, they 
saw some one beside the lake, and he called out 
to them asking what luck they had had, and they 
made answer that they had had none, but had been 
fishing all night and caught nothing. Then the 
Stranger on the lakeshore shouted to them to cast 
their nets on the other side of the boat, and when 
they did so these men, who had been fishing all 
night without getting anything, found themselves 
unable to draw the net in because of their great 
catch. And John, who was next to Peter in the 
boat, at that moment recognized Jesus, and told 
Peter that it was the Lord. Peter, in his great 
anxiety to get to Jesus, swam ashore, and after a 
little the others brought in the net with one hun- 
dred and fifty-three fine fish, and they had a break- 
fast with Jesus there in the open air by the lake. 
But they had a love talk with Jesus afterward that 
was infinitely more delicious than their break- 
fast. 

Are there any disappointed, lonely hearts here 
who have been fishing all the year and taken noth- 
ing? Are you coming to Christmas with a sore 
memory of the hardships of the year? Is your 
heart heavy with disappointment and defeat? 
Listen ! The Christ who walked by the lakeshore, 
where his friends had fished in vain through the 
long hours of the night, that he might comfort 



THE CHRISTMAS GUEST 



380 



their morning with success and breakfast with 
them in love, is your Saviour and your friend also. 
Do you suppose that those disciples, talking of it 
afterward, would not have counted that to be the 
supreme fishing excursion of their lives ? So this 
may be the supreme year of your life if, at its 
close, after disappointment and defeat and hard 
experiences, there shall come this Christmas season 
a new and tenderer fellowship with Jesus Christ, 
your loving Friend and Saviour. 

And we must not forget, if there is in our 
hearts a keen sense of poverty, and of having but 
little to do with, that Jesus is able to multiply our 
little into an abundance. The Christ who took 
the little lad's loaves and fishes and fed the hungry 
thousands is the same Jesus who can come into 
your Christmas time and take the little that you 
have with which to bless your fellow men and mul- 
tiply it beyond all your hope. 

Jacob A. Kiis, whose devoted, Christlike service 
has been such a benediction to the poor of IsTew 
York city, tells a story of "Mulberry Street" that 
I would like to condense for our comfort. It 
is the story of a widow who had a small income 
which came from the interest on some government 
bonds. She had read somewhere that the poor in 
the city tenements had little chance to know Christ- 
mas joys. She said to herself, "One child shall 
have a Christmas tree/' and she cut off a dollar 



390' THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

coupon and mailed it to a college professor to find 
the child. The coupon looked like a miniature 
dollar, and as the professor took it from the letter 
on the morning before Christmas, he said, "Ah, 
little dollar, I know where you are needed." He 
went down town to a narrow street with five- 
story tenements on each side. Entering one, he 
groped his way through a dark hall to a rear room, 
where lived six children, and the baby was sick, 
and the father out of work. But there w T as a 
branch of evergreen in one corner which Johnnie 
had found by a church door. On it hung some 
colored newspaper pictures and three pieces of 
colored glass. 

The professor brought out the little dollar. "A 
friend sends you this for Christmas. Buy some- 
thing for the children and a good dinner for all." 
The woman hurried to the grocery store and care- 
fully filled her basket, and gave the grocer the 
little dollar, but he was afraid to take it. As 
she was sadly putting down her precious basket, 
a gentleman standing by interposed and gave the 
grocery keeper a dollar bill for the coupon. As 
this gentleman went out on the street he met a 
hackman who had an old horse who had been doing 
errands in the neighborhood for many years. "See 
here, Thomas, take this and buy your horse a bag 
of oats, so he can keep Christmas," and the gentle- 
man passed over the little dollar. The feed-man. 



THE CHRISTMAS GUEST 



391 



when Thomas bought the oats, sent the little dollar 
to the pawnshop to see if it were good, and the 
pawnbroker promptly handed over a dollar bill 
for it. 

Later a young girl came into the pawnshop and 
asked for the loan of three dollars on a watch. 
At first the pawnbroker would give but two, but 
at last he said : "Here, it is Christmas. I'll take 
the risk." And he added the coupon to the two 
dollars. 

A little later the girl stood at a knit-goods coun- 
ter picking out a shawl. The clerk objected to the 
coupon, but took it to the desk. The storekeeper 
came back and looked sharply at the girl, and then, 
saying it was all right, graciously attended her to 
the door. As he stood there a thin voice near by 
said, "Merry Christmas ! here's your paper !" 
The storekeeper knew the struggle life was to the 
newsboy, and he said, "Here's a dollar, like your- 
self; it is small, but it is all right. Have a good 
time with it." 

On reaching home the newsboy found an ambu- 
lance in the midst of the crowd at the door of the 
tenement. As it drove off a little girl was left 
weeping on the top step. Her father had been 
taken to the hospital, and to-morrow would be 
Christmas. The newsboy took a turn down the 
hall to think. "Here, Susie, you take this and 
let the kids have their Christmas. Mr. Stein 



392 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

gave it to me. It is a little one, but it is all 
right/' 

There was a Christmas tree in Susie's flat, with 
candles and presents on it, but the little dollar 
rested securely in the purse of the charity visitor 
who had come in that afternoon and had given the 
children a dollar bill for the coupon, when she 
heard the story of the newsboy and his sac- 
rifice. 

In the evening the professor's wife came home 
and said to him, "I heard such a story of 
a little newsboy to-day, at the meeting of our 
District Charity Committee." And she told him 
the story of the newsboy and Susie. "And," she 
continued, "I just got the little dollar to keep." 
She took it from her purse and passed it to her hus- 
band. 

"What!" said the professor, as he read the 
number, "if here isn't my little dollar come back 
to me ! I left it in Bedford Street this morning." 

After a moment's pause the professor's wife 
said, "Jones's children won't have any Christmas 
tree. He told me this morning he could not afford 
one. Let us give them the little dollar." And 
they did, and so the little dollar went on its way, 
like the widow's mite of, old, blessing and being 
blessed because the benediction of Jesus was upon 
it* Let us bring what we have gladly and in 
gratitude to Christ for his blessing. 



THE CHRISTMAS GUEST 



393 



IV 

We must not close without remembering that 
nothing can be more certain than that if there is 
one here who is weary of sin and lonely at heart, 
restless and unsatisfied, and anxious to know 
Christ, Jesus will surely be his Christmas guest. 
Do you recall the day when Christ was passing 
through Jericho ? And in J ericho there lived Zac- 
chseus, a tax-collector, who was hated by the people 
because he had grown rich by unscrupulous deal- 
ings. But down at the bottom Zacchaeus was not 
satisfied. He had lonely hours when he longed 
for love and fellowship. At such times Zacchseus 
would shudder and say, "I would give half of all 
my wealth if I knew how to get out of this ditch 
of selfishness and sin in which I have mired my- 
self." And so one day when the news came that 
Jesus was nearing Jericho, and the added news 
that old blind Bartimseus had been healed by 
him, Zacchseus pressed his way to the front of the 
crowd to get sight of Jesus. But he was a short 
man and had no chance until he climbed up into 
a tree and got his head above the crowd. And then 
Jesus came along and passed under that very 
tree. Suddenly he looked up, and those gentle, 
heart-searching eyes of the Master pierced away 
down into the heart of Zacchseus, and he said, 
"Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down ; for to-day 
I must abide at thy house." Zacchseus was on the 



394 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

ground in a moment. Mr. Moody used to say that 
right there occurred Zacchseus's conversion, "some- 
where between the limb and the ground." As 
Christ and Zacchseus walked away, on every side 
remarks were made, and bitter looks went with 
the word, "He is gone to be guest with a man that 
is a sinner." But, thank God, that is just like 
Jesus. He is always ready to go home with a poor 
sinner if there is a chance to do him good. O 
sinful heart, this Christmas time may be the time 
of your redemption. It may be the beginning of 
a new and glorious epoch in your life. Christ is 
not only willing to be your Christmas guest, but 
he is seeking after you, begging for the oppor- 
tunity. 

So I think we can, at the close of our study, 
agree with the poet as to where Jesus will spend 
Christmas : 

Where will Jesus spend Christmas? 
With her of the lonely room, 
With visitors few, 
One Visitor true, 
Will draw the curtains of gloom: 
Her face will grow bright 
In the heavenly light 

Of him whose presence gives songs in the night. 

Where will Jesus spend Christmas? 
Where father and mother smile, 

And fair children play 

Through the short, happy day, 
Remembering Jesus the while. 



THE CHRISTMAS GUEST 



395 



It will double the glee, 
O Lord, if they see 

Thy face, as they gather at thy blessfcd knee. 

Where will Jesus spend Christmas? 
Away in the heathen land, 
Where loving hearts tell 
Of the Lord they know well, 
Though few the glad news understand. 
As their hearts hurry back 
O'er the homeward track, 
The Master's presence will make up the lack. 

Where will Jesus spend Christmas? 
With the free man and the slave: 
With some on the sea, 
As of old he would be, 
The God of the bold and the brave: 
With the sinner who sighs, 
And for love's pardon cries: 

With the sick — with the one that at Christmas dies. 

Where will Jesus spend Christmas? 
With any who will invite, 
Though lowly the board, 
The Bethlehem Lord. 



CHAPTER XXX 



The Kingliness of Patience 
The kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, — Rev. 1. 9. 

Patience is a virtue, or, rather, a grace which 
beautifies all virtues — which no man ever gets 
easily. It cannot be inherited from heroic ances- 
tors. JSTo pious mother or saintly father has ever 
been able to bequeath patience to the son or 
daughter. Patience cannot be bought. It is not 
for sale in the market. It is not in any college 
curriculum. No university will give a degree of 
this kind. Patience is not a child of prosperity. 
It comes hardly to those upon whom the sun 
smiles and upon whom the south winds blow softly. 
It is a virtue that comes through days of stress 
and struggle. It thrives in the north wind and 
defies cold and tempest. It is more often born of 
grief and sorrow than it is of joy and gladness. 

Patience is the blossom and the fruit that 
blooms and ripens on the storm-whipped tree of 
tribulation. Paul tells us that "tribulation work- 
eth patience." Tribulation is a tree which grows 
in the desert of trial, but it is a wonderful blossom 
and a rich fruit which it yields. 

It is a beautiful conceit of the poets to think 
of the Christian graces as angels who visit us with 

396 



THE KINGLINESS OF PATIENCE 397 

blessing and comfort. Bayard Taylor has so con- 
ceived of patience. He sings: 

To cheer, to help us, children of the dust, 
More than one angel has our Father given; 

But one alone is faithful to her trust, 
The best, the brightest exile out of heaven. 

Her ways are not the ways of pleasantness ; 

Her paths are not the lightsome paths of joy; 
She walks with wrongs that cannot find redress, 

And dwells in mansions Time and Death destroy. 

She waits until her stern precursor, Care, 
Has lodged on foreheads, open as the morn, 

To plow his deep, besieging trenches there — 
The signs of struggles which the heart has borne. 

But when the first cloud darkens in our sky, 
And face to face with Life we stand alone, 

Silent and swift, behold! she draweth nigh, 
And mutely makes our sufferings her own. 

Unto rebellious souls, that, mad with Fate, 
To question God's eternal justice dare, 

She points above with looks that whisper, "Wait — 
What seems confusion here is wisdom there." 

It is in some circles popular to sneer at patience 
as the peculiar virtue of the poor and the weak. 
We are apt to think of a man as patient because 
he cannot help himself, but we could not make 
a greater mistake. There is no surer indication 
of reserve force and true greatness than in the 
exhibition of patience. John spoke well when he 
coupled the kingdom and the patience of Jesus 
Christ together. Patience is the most kingly of all 
graces. 



398 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 



I 

Nothing is more impressive to us about the 
divine character than the patience of God. Syl- 
vester Horne, the London preacher, beautifully 
says that at the heart of God is infinite patience. 
His forbearance is inexhaustible. His power and 
pity never tire. He is never moved from his atti- 
tude of grace. With all man's rebellious ways 
and thoughts he fainteth not. His aspect is ever 
of love waiting to redeem and power waiting to 
revive. The uplifted Christ upon the cross does 
not represent a spasm of unusual love and com- 
passion on the part of God toward men, but just 
the normal, constant, changeless attitude of God's 
heart. The miracle of forgiveness, as it is the 
greatest of all miracles, is a daily, an hourly 
miracle — a miracle of every moment. God is 
ever blotting out sins from his remembrance — 
never tiring. It is like the infinite, tireless 
patience of the sea. The children ply their spades 
upon the sands to make work for the sea. They 
heap the sand up, they dig deep into it. Hundreds 
disfigure the hard, golden surface, and leave their 
stains upon it ; then quietly the old sea turns upon 
its course, and rolls its waves across the sands, 
and every trace of stain is obliterated, becomes 
as if it had never been; when the tide ebbs again 
there is no trace upon the smooth, shining surface 
of the sand to show that it had ever known dis- 



THE KINGLINESS OF PATIENCE 399 

turbance. Day after day, day after day, the scene 
is repeated, and the sea is never tired of smoothing 
things out again; it never complains, it never 
resents the new work imposed upon it. And the 
secret is that there is such infinite reserve of 
power that all that man can do frets it no whit. 
It is only a question of time and it will put all 
things to rights again. Again and again, as I 
have stood by the sea, this sense of patience, of 
tirelessness, has come over me. Like the God who 
holds it in his hand, it fainteth not, neither is 
weary. 

It is this infinite patience and forbearance in 
Jesus Christ which is the greatest manifestation 
of his kingship. Do you remember when they 
came to J esus with the question, "Lord, how often 
shall my brother sin against me and I forgive 
him?" How many have felt a sympathy with 
that question ! We have felt that, somehow, there 
must be a limit to what is expected in the way of 
forbearance and forgiveness. We say to ourselves, 
you can't expect a man to be always forgiving 
over and over again forever. Alas! it does not 
take long to wear out our patience. I have seen a 
father whom, all his world regarded as a good man, 
and who was esteemed by all who knew him as a 
loving, patient father, so changed toward a way- 
ward son that he closed his door upon him and 
wished never to see him again. Mothers come 



400 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

nearer having a divine patience with lis. Usually 
the wayward boy who has worn out the patience 
of everyone else, until friends are a thing of the 
past, has one consciousness left as a last anchor 
to his soul, that there is one heart that so long as 
it is above ground will not fail him, and that is 
in his mother's breast. But even mothers' hearts 
have drooped and died; and if they have for- 
given, they have lost hope even in forgiving. And 
so we come back to the old question which they 
brought so long ago to Christ, and ask when we 
shall be allowed to harden our hearts. But 
Jesus looked upon them and answered them, 
"Unto seventy times seven." O, the divine 
patience of J esus Christ ! In that patience is all 
our hope. 

II 

The highest glory of mans self-possession comes 
through patience. Emerson in his remarkable 
essay on "power" furnishes us many illustrations 
of this. He shows that in chemistry, the galvanic 
stream, slow but continuous, is equal in power to the 
electric spark, and is, in our arts, a better agent. 
At West Point the chief engineer pounded with 
a hammer on the trunnions of a cannon until he 
broke them off. He fired a piece of ordnance sev- 
eral hundred times in swift succession until it 
burst. 'Now which stroke broke the trunnion? 
Every stroke. Which blast burst the piece ? Every 



THE KINGEINESS OF PATIENCE 401 

blast. It was a victory of patience. Military men 
are generally of the opinion that the worst regular 
troops will beat the best volunteers. Practice is 
nine tenths. The best school for orators, we are 
told, is a course of mobs. All the great speakers 
were bad speakers at first. No genius can recite 
a ballad at first reading so well as mediocrity can 
at the fifteenth or twentieth reading. A humor- 
ous writer says that the reason why nature is so 
perfect in her art, and gets up such inconceivably 
fine sunsets, is that she has learned how, at last, 
by dint of doing the same thing so very often. 
Turn anywhere you please, it is the same lesson of 
patience as king. The great musician will give 
six hours every day at the piano only to gain 
facility of touch. The tireless artist will paint 
six hours a day only to get command of the 
materials, oils, ochers, and brushes. The masters 
say that they can recognize a supreme artist in 
music by seeing only the pose of the hands 
upon the keys. Always it is the victory of 
patience. 

Self-mastery, self-conquest, is the most kingly 
thing in a human life. It is the greatest victory 
which Jesus Christ can help us to win. It can 
be won only through acquiring the patience of 
Jesus. If we regard our lives as Christ did his, 
as of supreme importance to God, and feel that we 
too are sent of God to do high and holy work, 



402 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

then we too may acquire the patience of Jesus. 
( We have a remarkable illustration of this in the 
story of Antonio Stradivari, a maker of violins, 
some three centuries ago in northern Italy. His 
violins are now world famous and almost price- 
less. I suppose there are many men who wake 
music out of them who never dream of the wonder- 
ful piety and the patient, worshipful devotion that 
went into every stroke that contributed to their 
building. 

Now Antonio Stradivari felt himself called of 
God to make violins. The music was in his very 
soul. He felt that he was sent of God to do this, 
and that God could not get along without him. 
There is a fine poem of George Eliot's which closes 
thus: "God cannot do Antonio's work without 
Antonio." 

Into his work Antonio put his whole soul, as 
if he had been ordained from all eternity to do 
it, and this he regarded as his work for the world 
and the world's Creator. And, sustained by these 
thoughts, in spite of all the scorn heaped upon 
him, his consciousness grew inspired ; he did his 
work with a precision and love and lavish care 
and tireless patience that a man can give only to 
work which is conscientiously done for God. Some 
one mockingly asked him : 

"What! were God 
At fault for violins, thou absent?" 



THE KINGLINESS OF PATIENCE 



403 



"Yes; 

He were at fault for Stradivari's work." 

"Why, many hold Giuseppe's violins 
As good as thine." 

"May be: they are different. 
His quality declines: he spoils his hand 
With overdrinking. But were his the best, 
He could not work for two. My work is mine, 
And, heresy or not, if my hand slacked 
I should rob God — since he is fullest good — 
Leaving a blank instead of violins. 
I say, not God himself can make man's best 
Without best man to help him." 

" Tis God gives skill, 
But not without men's hands: He could not make 
Antonio Stradivari's violins 
Without Antonio." 

I would to God that every one of us could be 
possessed with this great feeling concerning our 
own work. If we felt that way about it, we could 
be patient. Even God cannot teach a man 
patience concerning a work which he regards 
of no value. V 

C" My good friend, Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, 
says the greatest thing Paul ever did was when, 
in the last chapter of Philippians, out of the dun- 
geon, he exclaimed: "I have learned how to be 
abased and how to abound, how to be full and how 
to be hungry. I can do all things through Christ 
which strengthened me. Eejoice, and again I say 
unto you, rejoice !" That was a supreme expres- 
sion of patience, but Hillis declares that God can 



404 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

teach that to the most common heart under the 
most sordid and trying circumstances. And he 
tells this story to prove it : A mining engineer who 
was doing what he could to help in the midst of 
the terrible confusion and suffering of San Fran- 
cisco, when for two days she had been shaken by 
earthquake and despoiled by fire, came upon a 
little bootblack who had returned to his home to 
get his brushes and box, but found that everything 
was in ashes. The big engineer took pity on him 
and they were soon walking toward a place of 
safety. Suddenly the little mite of humanity 
stopped. "Took a long time to git them things 
together," said the boy, waving his hand toward 
the blackened columns, "and just one day to put 
them out ! Say, cap !" And now the urchin stopped, 
put his right arm on the arm of the man, and said, 
earnestly, as though he were speaking from the 
depths of his soul a profound conviction — "say, 
cap, 'tain't no use for a feller to think he can lick 
God ! He can't do it ! Just one thing to do — do 
the right thing, then take things jes' as they come, 
and act as if you wuz glad!" God had taught 
this boy, in the hard school of poverty and earth- 
quake and fire, Paul's greatest lesson, which he 
reached only in his most luminous mood, the 
supreme lesson of patience! Paul said: "Kejoice, 
and again I say to you rejoice, whether full or 
hungry." The boy said, "Take things just as they 



THE KINGLINESS OF PATIENCE 405 

come, and then act as if you were glad !" Which 
is better ? I do not know, but I am sure they are 
close kin. 

Ill 

There is not only a thought of power, of reserve 
force and self-mastery, in this combination of 
kingdom and patience, there is also a thought of 
beauty. 'No grace so adorns a king as patience. 
If we read of some great king, with almost unlim- 
ited power and wealth in his hands, that he bears 
himself with compassion and forbearance and 
patience toward the poor or the ignorant or the 
weak, we are filled with admiration and regard. 
We instinctively feel that this gentle patience is 
the most kingly exhibition of authority and power. 
May it please God to teach us this lesson in our 
own lives ! Each of us in his place should be a 
king. And for us there is nothing that will add so 
much in grace and beauty to our lives and char- 
acters as patience. David learned this truth, 
though he had to find it in a hard school. How 
grandly does he sing: "Fret not thyself because 
of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the 
workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut 
down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. 
Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou 
dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. 
Delight thyself also in the Lord ; and he shall give 
thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way 



406 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall 
bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth thy 
righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as 
the noonday. Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently 
for him: fret not thyself because of him who 
prospereth in his way, because of the man who 
bringeth wicked devices to pass. Cease from 
anger, and forsake wrath : fret not thyself in any 
wise to do evil. For evildoers shall be cut off : but 
those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit 
the earth." And again David sings out of his 
experience : "I waited patiently for the Lord ; and 
he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He 
brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of 
the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and 
established my goings. And he hath put a new 
song in my mouth, even praise unto our God." 

There is no department of our lives where 
patience is not a kingly grace. How beautiful it 
is in business life ! It is the patient man who, 
whether he be an employer or an employee, wins 
glorious opinions from those who have to deal 
with him in times of stress and heat. In our 
church life nothing is more in demand than 
patience — the patience that gives the soft answer 
that turneth away wrath ; the patience that is not 
quick to resent a seeming insult ; a patience which 
is always looking for the best side and waiting for 
a clear understanding. Such a patience is 



THE KINGLINESS OF PATIENCE 407 

glorious and beautiful in all our social relations. 
In no place is it needed more than in our home life. 
There, where we ought to be most Christian, I 
fear some show to the least advantage the Chris- 
tian graces. God forgive us if it is so ; for, after 
all, the most important sphere of any man's life, 
though he be President of the United States 
or king of Great Britain, is the life of his home. 
We ought not to excuse ourselves from the closest 
watchfulness of the Christian character we exhibit 
in our homes. Nothing will tell there so much for 
happiness, so much for wise counsels, as patience. 
In no place is patience challenged so much, per- 
haps, as among the little details of home life, and 
in no place, if the challenge be met in a Christian 
spirit, and the kingliness of patience is shown, 
is the sight so beautiful. Our earthly homes are 
so transitory, they change so rapidly, the beautiful 
fellowship we have there will be over so soon, 
that we ought to be very, very patient with one 
another. We shall not have these homes long. 
If some of us only knew how soon the "Good-by" 
would have to be said, the frown would fade, the 
vexing thought would be displaced, and the quick, 
impatient word would die on our lips unuttered. 

They are such dear, familiar feet that go 
Along the path with ours — feet fast or slow 
And trying to keep pace — if they mistake, 
Or tread upon some flower that we would take 



408 THE GREAT THEMES OF THE BIBLE 

Upon our breast, or bruise some reed, 

Or crush poor Hope until it bleed, 

We may be mute, 

Not turning quickly to impute 

Grave fault; for they and we 

Have such a little way to go — can be 

Together such a little while along the way— 

We will be patient while we may. 

So many little faults we find! 

We see them, for not blind 

Is love. We see them but if you and I 

Perhaps remember them, some by and by 

They will not be 

Faults then— grave faults — to you and me, 
But just odd ways — mistakes, or even less — 
Remembrances to bless. 

Days change so many things — yes, hours; 
We see so differently in sun and showers. 
Mistaken words to-night 
May be so cherished by to-morrow's light. 
We may be patient; for we know 
There's such a little way to go. 



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